the chinese made engines are made from the dies that honda sells to other companies. they have a proven track record, and even have their own class among small engine racing applications. i dont belive their is any reason for anyone to call them "junk" as you WILL NOT find any reviews on premium engines or generators that have not had problems or failures. GENERAC, which is a company that ONLY makes generators, now use clone engines. you will not walk into any home store, and find a snow thrower, pressure washer, or lawn mower with a honda or briggs and straton without ann insane price tag attached to it. might i also remind you, that with a labor cost of $95/hr these small engine mechanics charge you these days, is it worth it to fix a 10yr old honda when you can replace it with a new engine for the same money? lastly - there would not be a demand for these, which there obviously is, if the american companies were not trying to suck every last dollar out of the public. a company oversea's can reproduce and SHIP all there engines here for less than half what a honda cost - which i might also remind you - is made in china.. lastly ill bring up one more important point - the people that knock these are the people that dont own them. when you want a good review - ask the people that actally own one - not the people that want to belive their stuff is better just cause they spent more money. if you have the money to spend, and its for something you need your life to depend on - then yes its probably a better idea to go with a honda. the actual motors are very similar, but honda does use better carbs, better qualtity tanks and will have metal lever and switches in place of the clone's plastic. - but prepared to spend. nobody is saying the clones are "better", but they are far from junk. if you have an old mower or snow thrower that you kept good care of, but the b&s or honda finally gave out, can you justify spending all that money to replace it? for the price of replacement honda these days you can buy a new 2 stage troy bilt thrower with a clone.

So after much thought - we decided to talk to our daughter and let her know that we wanted to get her a laptop - but that we also have concerns about her use of technology - and that we would only do this with a contract. I'm going to be working on the contract for a while - and would welcome any ideas. So far, I know it will include that I have administrative control of the laptop - which will be used to update programs, run antivirus and antispyware - and generally ensure me that I have access (unlike her ipod which she changed her password on so I don't have access). It also includes that all technology (ipods, laptop, etc) will be in the parent's bedroom - from when it's time to get ready for bed - until after school the next day (or the next morning if there's no school). (not having it in the kitchen over night bc. she'll sneak down and get it if she's awake in the middle of the night. She won't sneak into our bedroom to get it.) This will prevent her from using it in the middle of the night (esp. tempting when her friend lives in Vietnam is is available to chat at those times) - and thinking she can have the laptop open in the bathroom while she's getting ready for bed. For now, I am not setting time limits - but will include that those could get added in the future if we think she's using it too much. The reason to not add it now is that she is using it a bit too much. BUT - that's bc. she loves her new Sims game - which is actually motivating her to do her homework as soon as she comes home. For the first time ever, I do not have to monitor her homework and keep asking her to do it (I still pay attention to what she's doing, but it's nice that the impetus to do it and stay organized is now coming from her). She's also coming out of a serious depression - and having some pretty terrific, responsible behavior - so any limits on amount of her free time spent on the computer - when she's meeting all her responsibilities - isn't as pressing for right now. She's also healing form a broken ankle - so in fairness to her, there's not as much active stuff she can do with her free time. ------------------------------- I have some questions about how to set up her computer so I have administrative control. I have that set up on my computer now - and she can use it as a guest. But if my computer is off - and restarts, she needs the password to get on. She doesn't have the password to my computer (which is how I want it). But I do want her to be able to log into her own computer without me giving her the administrator's password. Is there a way to do this? Set it up so she can start the computer and log in as a guest? Thanks. Lynn.

No one is going to decide for you, sorry. Here is yet another way of looking at it. Your calculations for the hot part of the home is 6400 BTU for 500 sq so that leaves (9000-6400) 2600 BTU for the cooler part. That is 12.8/sq BTU for the part with more heat generators and perhaps the sunny side. If you take the 2600 BTU that is "left over" that is 7.9 BTU/sq for the part of the home that has less heat-generating stuff. 9000 seems like enough. Roadking is right, though, only 9% difference in the minima between the two so it probably won't make that much difference in humidity control at low load. You'll probably be happy either way.

In any case my son got a good deal for grad school. First 4yrs we paid a lot for the physics program at RIT in Rochester NY where he graduated with high honors. He was awarded $25,000 a year from them in high school to attend and since it was only an hour or so away was a good fit bur still a $40,000 a year school. University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh Pa offered him $30,000 a year guaranteed to attend their physics program for his PHD so since it was only 3hrs away and we have family there worked out well but the traffic there is horendous. He has been there 5yrs now or 6 I think. He will be done by the end of the year. His advisor has already hired him on after he is done at $60,000 a year. Wanted him for 2yrs but son only wants to do 1 and can look for a job in industry that will pay more while working. He is slowly getting his RIT loans paid off.. Funny thing is his advisor got offered a job in Texas last year and the students would have probably had to follow to finish but thank goodness the guy decided to stay at Pitt, they must have made a good counter offer, something like that. Soon I will be a proud mom calling him doctor of physics. How the heck do people with more than 1 kid do it and not go bankrupt is beyond me.