Thought I would come back and update. Well, in the end, I decided to go with the Apple. :-) There were so many reasons I wanted to get one and quite a few reasons I didn't want to get another windows machine. Two of the issues that were keeping me from getting the Apple resolved at the last minute and I was very happy to see no obstacles to getting it. I have had a MacBookPro for two weeks now and loving it! Almost have everything moved over from the old computer and Monday got the new printer installed and connected. Tech support has been great as expected. There have been some issues with changing over from the windows system to the Mac. I was using MS Works on the old Dell and converting those to iWorks was not straightforward although in the end most of that is done. Going from MS Office is easier. Changing over from Windows Media Player to iTunes...if you are importing your music to WMPlayer in the wma format, well, come to find out it is a proprietary format to Windows and it is not easy to switch over to mp3 that will allow the iTunes to play it. I had to convert 800 songs to mp3 before moving it to the Apple which was not so great. Time consuming. Had to download four programs on Tuesday and only one of them actually made the conversion. Plus converting the files does lower the quality some. So, I am planning on getting as much off of CDs to replace them as I can, but they are fine for the time being. Just for your information, you can set your WindowsMediaPlayer to import into it in the mp3 format and that will make your life so much easier if/when you want to move them or use another player. Photos were a breeze to move and using iPhoto is just a treat! Such an improvement over my previous photo software for organizing photos. I have never used Photoshop software, so maybe that is as good at organizing as the iPhoto? I do plan on trying photoshop at some point. So that's my story. :-) Jane, I hope you have made the change over to whatever you liked the most and have a new machine that you are happy with. :-)

The laptop's all set up - and dd received it on Tuesday. For now we'll try open office. She does have a desktop pc with word if she needs it. And at school they use Mac's. So no matter what we use at home, it won't be quite the same as in school. abreeze - thanks for the link. It's beyond anything she or I will do now - but one or both of us might get more versed in powerpoint over time. That's a helpful comparison. I created recovery disks - but when I went to create a password reset disk, the laptop kept asking me to insert a disk. There was a disk in there. I even switched disks in case one was bad. But it was birthday day - so I figured I'd get to this later. Well - it came back and bit me in the butt. Birthday night had some trauma. After dinner, my mother fell backwards and hit her head on the sidewalk. I took her to the ER. My daughter was distraught - and the parent controls had logged her off at 9pm. Husband thought this was a reasonable exception - so he logged into the admin account for her. She immediately eliminated the time controls. No big deal, I thought - I'll reset them another time. Somehow she tricked my husband into entering the admin password again - told him she'd restarted the computer by accident. Well - that sneak had gotten him to enter the password in a field that allowed her to change it. She changed the passwords and locked us out of the laptop. So this is where that password reset disk would have been helpful - to override what she did and reset a new admin password. So this is partly a note to people about the important of creating a password reset disk (or set up on flash drive). I'd never even heard of this before. We're at the beach with my daughter and friend - it's instead of a birthday party. So we're not having the confrontation with this weekend. Monday - we tell her she has to hand back the reins for the admin account (or no laptop). The joys of parenting preteens. It took her less than 24 hours to violate most of the terms of the contract she signed. Sure wish I'd had that reset password disk. When I get admin control back, I'll be sure to create one somehow. (I assume at this point my only option is getting her to give me that new password she created.) Thanks. Lynn.

Thanks everyone. I guess I am just over whelmed with all this. I just got to feel like I could actually know what to do (most of the time) with my desktop & then I went & got this thing. For starters, I can't manage to find how to send mail on this IE7 screen. Don't know if it is the screen size (15.4) or IE7 or if I am just missing it. Between configuring the laptop, getting rid of all Dells extra tag ons, etc. I am losing it. Also, I have a webcam camera so I can talk with my grandchildren but after 12 hours of trying can't find anything to make it work. Googled & now I think that I have to download a separate program. Is that true & is there a safe one. Free if possible. Thanks so much - again. Debbie.

what size do you want the laptop to be? the large 17" or regular 15" range? Yes you would need a wireless router, I just bought a new Linksys wireless G router at walmart for $49.82 which would work fine for what you want. Linksys WRT54GS2 Wireless-G for the printer to work you will have to set up a network with the printer on the network and her laptop on the same network group and have printer sharing enabled. Depending on your printer it may have an ethernet jack on it if so it can be plugged right into your router, if not using a shared network is an option or you can get a print server to connect it. this is a great series of tutorials on how to set up networking and adding a printer to a network. Beginners Guides: Printer Sharing on a Home Network Since we do not know what brand or size laptop you want will wait on that but this is the one I just bought for my husband for Christmas and he will be doing the same type usage. Acer - Aspire Laptop with AMD Athlon which has a single core AMD processor, which is fine for light use like that, should you want to go up a to a dual core this one is also very well priced Acer - Aspire Laptop with AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core they are both the 15.6" size and have the full size keyboard with numeric pad, the second one has a bigger hard drive and one more gig of RAM. Both come with windows 7 home premium and are 64 bit. His has pretty decent sound my little netbook has terrible sound as do most of the netbooks, but carrying a set of earbuds remedies that problem. That should give you some ideas for specs so you can look around and compare brands and prices and sizes.