First, let me give you a run down on the major cool season grasses, and their pro's and cons. Perennial Ryegrass: A fine bladed, dark green bunch type grass. Germinates in 3-7 days, and is ready for it's first mowing in 3-4 weeks. Can tolerate close mowing (used on golf course fairways) but does well at 2-3 inches. PR is often part of mixes due to its quick germination, but in actuality isn't really good in a mixed stand due to it's fast rate of growth, it's better in a monostand. PR doesn't spread (except for a few new spreading cultivars that just came out) so any stand loss will necessitate periodic overseedings. Once established it is very difficult to seed other types of grass other than PR into the stand due to allelopathy. PR requires full sun, and is somewhat of a thirsty grass, requiring more water than the other major cool season grasses. PR has a very short dormancy period in times of drought, and the grass will die very soon. PR also can suffer cold kill, which occurs when winter temps get very low for long periods. Tall fescue: TF used to be a light green, coarse pasture grass until turf scientists in the late seventies and eighties started developing darker, finer varieties. Development has continued to this day and the newest varieties are dark green, fairly fine bladed, and much softer. Germination is typically 5-12 days, with the first mow at about a month. Also a bunch type grass, but newer varieties have high tillering and higher rhizome activity. Mature tall fescue will spread, albeit slowly, but for the first few years it's spreading is minimal. Any major stand loss will require overseeding. Tall fescue is best around 2-3.5 inches, depending on your preference. Too high it gets bunchy and thin. TF is very shade tolerant, most cultivars do well in sun and moderate shade. Tall fescue has the ability to develop very deep roots in certain soils, and can withstand periods of drought for a long time once mature. Dormancy is longer than PR, but periods of drought will ultimate lead to stand loss. One of the biggest drawbacks to TF is the disease brown patch, but in Colorado this will probably be minimal due to the lower night temps and drier air. Cold kill is also a possibility, but from what I have read cold kill isn't a huge problem unless temps are very low for long periods. TF mixes pretty well with Kentucky bluegrass, as long as you don't select super dark, slow growing cultivars. Kentucky Bluegrass: The Cadillac of turfgrass. Produces a soft lush turf with most cultivars dark green to dark blue green. Spreads via rhizomes, so overseeding is only necessary if very large areas are lost. Germinates in 8-28 days, and is usually slow to establish, first mowing in about 30-45 days depending on the weather, cultivar, soil, etc. The first year it is a bit fragile, but after that it is very durable. There are many different cultivars on the market today with variable characteristics. Usually cut at 2-3 inches, but some varieties can be cut to fairway heights. Mature grass can go dormant in times of drought for long periods, coming out of it when conditions are more favorable. It's spreading ability is one of it's best characteristics as it self repairs areas as big as a dinner plate in one season if properly cared for and feed well. Needs a bit more fertilizer and water than TF, but in reality, to have a great lawn they all require similar inputs. Cold kill isn't an issue, but many cultivars are slow to wake up in spring. It has been the convention to mix different cultivars to increase genetic diversity, and prevent a disease from wiping out an entire lawn. The newer cultivars today are thought to be disease tolerant enough where mixing several cultivars isn't really necessary anymore, which will give a more consistent lawn. Fine fescues are another type of turfgrass, but unless you have moderate to heavy shade, they are typically not suited for full lawns. Their needle like blades are soft, but they are not the greatest looking lawns, and I would only use them in the shady lawns I mentioned above. For a sunny lawn in Colorado you are going to have to irrigate due to your low humidity, and somewhat dry conditions. If water is too expensive to supply 1 inch a week in times of no rain, then PR, TF, and KBG are going to struggle. Fortunately disease pressure should be lower than areas that are hot and humid in the summer. All turfgrasses have their disease issues, with good cultural practices they should be kept to a minimum. To help you decide which cultivar you should use, you can consult the NTEP trials at www.ntep.org. Pay attention to your specific region and characteristics you are interested in. Not all cultivars are tested in the NTEP's since it is a 5 year trial, and new ones that come out mid trial aren't tested. That being said, if a cultivar is being sold, it has been tested by the grower for many years, or else they wouldn't bring it to market. For Colorado, if you choose KBG, I would probably pay attention to spring green up since you have a shorter growing season with lower spring temps. There are a few cultivars that do very well in that regard like Rush, Nugget, 4-Seasons, Jumpstart, and others. Also pay attention to what sod farms in the area are growing as well as local golf courses. Extension offices can be a good resource, but not always, especially when it comes to cultivar selection. Hope this helps.

Thanks everyone for your input. Now let me take you back a bit: I was at my brother's and he has a system that seems identical to mine: WMe, P3 or P4, old computers. I have a P3, and mine works MUCH faster. We went through the usual slow computer remedies, got it running faster, but still not near what mine does, even though mine (at that time) ran on only 128MB of ram and he had 256. It hadn't occured to me to see if both fans were working. Of course there must be a lot of variables between our two computers, but I got to more thinking, and so spawned this thread. I asked him to see if the CPU fan was working, and found it was at a dead stop. He said it needed the tiniest of a push to get it going and now his computer zings along like it always had.

I definitely would not get the celeron processor. Go for a better rated processor. I am an AMD fan prefer them over Intel but everyone has their own preferences. on the router make sure you change the default user name and password to the router itself and give your wireless network a very strong number/letter mix passphrase or use one generated by the router if it will do that (write it on a card and tape it to the bottom of the router not blocking any vents). Be sure also that you have enabled WPA2 encryption in the router setup so that your wireless is safe from those passing by or near you that could other wise jump onto your network. My router is a linksys G router and I have a 4000sqft house, I can use my laptops anywhere and get an excellent rated signal, I can go out in my yard and get the same, my neighbor can see my network from his house and he shows it as a strong signal, of course mine is locked down so he can not get on it as is his, I see his from my house which has 2 bars.

Thank you all for answering. owbist, I downloaded a program called HDD Health (recommended by Kim Komando) and that is what is giving me the Attribute seek error message. It was giving me the message about the Temp Critical and with the dust that was there, I'm sure I was headed for a crash. It said the temp ws 48 degrees celcius, so I feel very lucky that HDD Health caught it. I haven't had that message since I cleaned it out. I will try PC Pitstop when I finish here. I did a Balarc Advisor report and all it says about the hard drive is "160.04 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity",so I have to do a little research to find out what make it is. I do have the case up off the floor sitting on my desk top, but it still was very dusty. It has plenty of free space around it for ventilation. I really don't want to replace the whole set up, because this has every thing I need except smaller size and still feels like a "new" one to me, except I have a bulky 17" CRT monitor. Until now I have had zero problems with it. I think I bought it in 2004, so it isn't that old, at least for me, and it has everything most of the new ones have. I have 135 GB free out of the 160. How do I backup my bookmarks and address book? I use Firefox and Outlook Express. cboy,I think cloning to a new hard drive is what I want to do, so I might be back to ask how to do that. Thanks again