of course, there are many ways to burn PowerPoint to DVD for viewing it on TV: http://www.acoolsoft.com/knowledges/methods-to-burn-powerpoint-to-dvd.html You can compare the cons and pros of these ways and then choose the best way for you. For my part, the direct way to burn PowerPoint to dvd with Acoolsoft PPT to DVD Pro will be the most proper way if you want to make a professional DVD with DVD menu. Here is a link that might be useful: Acoolsoft PPT to DVD

Another thing: If you are having difficulties in determining what your maximum bid should be, do some research. If you go to the "advanced search" feature, you can search for completed auctions. So, if you want to buy a purple widget with a crimper attachment, you can see what the winning bids have been on recent sales of purple widgets with crimper attachments. You can also check the price of a new widget. You can check to see if it is easy to buy a crimper attachment separately. If it is, then you can also bid on purple widgets without the crimper attachment. As an example, I saw a lovely glass vitrine, or tabletop display case on Ebay. It had two shelves, beveled amber glass, gilt metal, a metal flower on top, and a pyramid shape. It was petite and gorgeous and the perfect thing for my living room and I had no idea what it was worth. And therefore no idea how much to bid. Several different searches on Ebay showed me that nothing else like this was for sale on Ebay currently, and nothing had been for sale recently. I checked on-line for new or old vitrines. Most were large pieces of furniture, which I didn't want and don't have room for. The two new tabletop vitrines I could find were not nearly as nice and didn't have the same look as the one on Ebay and cost between $200 and $300. All of this added up to the fact that if I really wanted that vitrine, I was going to have to be prepared to bid high, as alternatives really didn't exist. I bid right at the final minute (I'm too much of a coward to snipe with mere seconds left in the auction) for $175, the highest I have ever bid by a long shot. I won the vitrine for $161 and some change. It was all strategy. I knew I couldn't easily find a replacement and I had a rough idea of what the vitrine was worth. There had been several other bids over the last 48 hours of the auction, so I knew other people were interested in it. And I really, really, really wanted that vitrine and no other. I have to admit, I kept wondering if I was bidding too high, if the vitrine was worth the money, etc. But when it arrived and I unpacked it and put it on my coffee table, I knew it was perfect for the room and the look I would like to achieve. And therefore worth every penny. (Even though I probably shouldn't start the decorating plan with an accessory.) It's got the look and feel of what I would like the whole room to look like, so I can balance other choices with the vitrine. (Now I just have to decide what to put in it.) Another time, I really liked a small chrome lamp with a glass shade. Well, someone else liked it more and outbid me. Less than a week later, there was a listing for the same, exact style of lamp, but with a glass shade that did not match the lamp in style. Think ruffled cranberry glass shade on sleek, Art Deco style lamp. I won that auction for less than half of the earlier one. Even though I had to buy a new shade, I ended up spending less on it in total. I think buyers were turned off by the inappropriate lamp shade and didn't bid. I've lost plenty of other auctions because I simply didn't place as high a value on the item as other bidders. There's a type of china I like. I'm aware that when I bid on this china, I might be up against a serious collector, who will probably be willing to spend a lot more money than I am. But the china is something that would be nice to have, but not something that I really need or want, so I am willing to lose out on the auctions. So, figure out how much you really want/need the item. Check to see if other, similar items are available new or used, on Ebay or off. Check how much similar items have gone for in the past. Then figure out how much you are willing to bid. Bid once, bid your highest bid and bid as late as you can in the auction. Then sit back and relax.

Since I retired I took up photography as a hobby. I have bought nearly all of my photo equipment on Ebay or the Goodwill Industries auction (www.shopgoodwill.com). When I am looking for a specific lens or accessory I look for an older camera that is listed with extra lenses and accessories. If the group contains any of the items I need I buy the set, keep what I need then sell the rest on Ebay as individual items. I am not gonna say that I have made a lot of money, but I have saved a pile of money getting the things I want in this manner. Fortunately all the products I am selling will fit in the USPS Priority mail boxes so I know ahead of time exactly what the shipping charges will be, and if you pay the postage online the postoffice will pick the item up at your house. That makes it very easy. I would offer one word of caution. If you are going to do business online open a separate checking account just for your business and list it with PayPal. With PayPal the customer never gets your bank info. They pay PayPal, which in turn deposits in your account and you can confirm receipt of the payment even before you ship the item. By having the separate account, even if a hacker were to hack into the account, the most they could get is your hobby money, not your household budget money in your primary account.

Lazypup has the right idea for long term storage - use hard drives. Do not depend on camera memory cards and thumb drives for permanent storage. These eventually go bad with age. Do not trust any that are more than 5 years old. The end life may be 10 years. These cards and drives contain a 'keep-alive battery' and when the battery dies, so does the card. If you have cards that are more than 5 years old, its a good idea to replace these. A solid state memory junction is good for about 10,000 writes and rewrites. That is what kept this technology our of 'hard drives' for so long. Improvements and techniques have come along such that computer makers are beginning to place solid state drives (SSD) into lap tops. However, these are not perfect. A gamer might reach the life limit of a SSD due to his thousands of rewites to the disk. The average used probably will not reach this limit before the computer conks out or a replacement is bought. I had a bunch of photos stored on CDs, but I was warned by a genealoguy instructor to switch because the technology is changing and CDs will go the way of tape and floppy disks - these will be obsoleted in favor of DVDs. In the not too distant future, manufacurers will stop making CD drives and disks. Personally, I prefered CDs over DVDs for photo storage due to the larger spot size and separation compared to a DVD. But this won't matter in the future if no drives exist to read the CDs. As far as I can see, storage of digital photos and genealoggy files are a huge problem for me. Right now, I hobble along by moving these files to a external hard drive and that drive runs only when making backups. The rest of the time, it is off. (A purist would rightly claim this is not safe; Its much better to have a second backup copy on a another drive.) This leads to setting up a RAID array to improve relaibility. I have not done so since I am not well schooled about the features and behavor of RAID arrays. That is something I should learn.