The label says it has 512 MB of memory. I'm not sure which memory this is referring to, but if it is the RAM on the motherboard, it could use an upgrade. Windows XP likes to have 2 Gigabyte (2 GB) or more. You are using a wireless router on a DSL sevice. Make sure that your wireless router is secured so that someone else within range can't horn in and ride piggyback on your connection for free. The more computers using the connection, the slower it gets for any one computer. The next potential bottle neck is the DSL service. If this is over a phone line, it may not be a large jump in speed over a standard dial-up service. A good connection does have marked improvement in speed, but a troublesome connection looses much speed advantge. Consider taking the computer to a shop or friend and try on their lines. Another problem, if over a phone line, is a noisy line. Thw phone company can test your phone line for quality. Make sure that you tell the technicam that this line will be used for internet service. If over a phone line, another bottleneck can be the phone company. It may not have installed equipemnt capable of high speed data transfer. If you have a friend who has a high speed cable connection with a wireless router, you may want to try your computer on his connection. Have the computer checked out at a computer shop to discover if it is the computer or the DSL service to your house.

Hi Genes, thanks so much for your reply. No, haven't hooked it up to another monitor, and if truth be told, I do have another laptop on the way. This one is 4 years old. I'm also the gal who has the problem of the connection switching from electric to battery while connected----so I'm limping along and just waiting for my new one to arrive. Guess I was just hoping there would be some magic button I could push to fix this latest problem. That's all right I'll make it. Thanks again for your help. BarbB

I hope I don't come off too offensive but I see these posts occasionally on here and while I understand the frustration the poster may be experiencing I don't feel asking a web discussion board to 'pick' something for you is really the best way to get what YOU want. As you can see there are as many opinions as people here, no one but you and your family will be living in YOUR home. To me it's all very personal, I like to think I'm the one making the important decisions. I'm also a bit of a rogue and a risk taker, if I pick something that doesn't work, I'll be the one adjusting to it or changing it. How else are you going to influence others with something a bit different or open someones eyes to a possibility? I certainly don't want my kitchen to be like anyone else's, I want the unencumbered freedom to look at what I like. I have the confidence to step out of the box and see the bigger picture, I think a lot of people on here feel similarly. I will admit that my kitchen has changed a LOT since I've been reading GW (new build). There are a lot of fantastic ideas floating about on this site and I certainly appreciate them all. Like they say 'trust your gut', if it feels right do it. 3 people might hate it but 10 people may love it. At the end of the day it's YOURS and you have to live w/it. I just couldn't look at something 20 times a day and say "I had no idea what to put there so I let them decide for me", I'd feel like an imbecile. That's one of the reasons I've never posted a picture of anything or my layout (I designed the house myself), I really don't care what the opinions of others are regarding MY space. My DW chose the master as she knew the kitchen was mine, we bounced things off of each other and family but we've been around long enough to know what we want and how it should work and to give each other the freedom of choice. I understand some people don't have confidence in there choices, aesthetic, or style but I think it would be cool if every one just did they're own thing and then compared notes. I would imagine some old 'truths' would fly out the window and all of our eyes would be open a little wider with the possibilities. Again, no intent to offend, hope I didn't. I may even be out of line :) If so sorry. MM

Yes, Ingrid - San Diego has been built up more recently. You are doing a great job preserving and planting your property - eventually it will be "old", and people will fing YOUR roses! I do know there are some old neighborhoods in LA, as I have seen them. Meanwhile, here is a list of the roses I have "rustled" in my old neighborhood, and one nearby park. I will see how many pics I can do in one comment, and put the rest in other comments. One thought - if you find roses where an actual cultivar has been surviving for decades, that means that it has not been cloned zillions of times, and has not "declined in commerce" as some roses have. You get one way closer to the original. MADAME CAROLINE TESTOUT: 1890 HT, repeats. When we moved in here, I could see this rose out of my kitchen window, climbing up a tree in the back of a house (built in 1910) 2 doors down from mine. The house was empty for 5 years, but eventually a couple bought it. I went over there to say Hi quite promptly, and was delighted to see a lady unloading 20+ pots of roses out of a truck! I asked her about the rose in the back yard, and she did not know it was there - it turned out that the base of that rose was buried in a gigantic blackberry bush. Another day I helped her get rid of the blackberries, and it turned out that there were 2 bushes of MCT underneath them. FORTUNE'S DOUBLE YELLOW: hybrid gigantea, discovered in China by Robert Fortune in 1844. Once bloomer. We got this rose from a cutting I took from a huge one which was growing over 4 trees in a little park nearby. We ran into the head of the DPW for the tiny town, and he said he had planted it, from a cutting he took from a plant in the back of one of the old estates in that town. SCHMIDT'S SMOOTH YELLOW: mystery polyantha. Repeats frequently. Best guesses are either 'Eugneie Lamesch', 1898, or 'George Elger', 1912. Repeats, and is COPLETELY thornless. I found it in the front yard of a 1930s cottage 4 blocks from my house which was empty, and about to be torn down. CRIMSON GLORY, 1935 HT, repeats. Fabulous, velvety red blooms, and amazingly strong "old rose" fragrance. I found this growing up a tree in the same garden in front of the same cottage where I got "Schmidt's Smooth Yellow" above. I will post these now, and put more in further comments. Jackie