Lisa, Oh the lake looks so sad. Not to worry. You are the woman who always has an overflowing rain gauge while mine is collecting dust and dead bugs. I have faith in the weather there. I think OKC will get good rainfall in April-June. Let's hope that faith is not misplaced. LCDollar, Poor Lake Canton. I was watching the news from that part of the state last year as the lake levels fell. I don't blame the local residents for being upset. I don't think we should steal water from one part of the state to help another unless it is a truly desperate situation. We have had low-flow toilets since we built this house in 1999. We even had them back in Fort Worth long ago. It is one of the easiest ways to save water---almost effortless and well worth the investment. We do practice water conservation and always have, but I see plenty of people with sprinkler systems watering so much that water is running down the road. That drives me crazy. We catch water in rain barrels and buckets too and I try to make it last as long as possible. Lake Texoma is not at the lowest level it ever has reached, but it is headed in that direction. Without good spring rain, I think it will reach a new low elevation. It will get worse in a few months when one of the North Texas municipal water districts starts piping water out of it again. They have that right, and they've done it before, but since the lake is already so low, the residents and business owners around Lake Texoma aren't going to like it one bit. They are trying to be proactive and find ways now to restrict the amount of water piped out of the lake and to restrict how often the lake is used for power generation. Both of those items already are covered by long-established laws and rules, so I don't know that the "Save Lake Texoma" group will have any success in getting the restrictions tightened. In bad years, some areas almost go to war with the various entities fighting to get their share of whatever water is available. Down here in southern OK, we have had to fight the efforts of various water municipalities that have tried to force OK entities to sell water to them. I am a native Texas and I love Texas, but I want for them to work to create more reservoirs and better conservation and deal internally with their own water shortages. I want them to keep their hands off our water! I have watched ever since we bought our land here in 1997 as the growth of the D-FW metro area has grown by leaps and bounds and they have not begun construction on one new reservoir even though they have grown several million in population. We need for rain to fall in western OK and in western north Texas. They need it desperately and will be in trouble long before the rest of us are if they don't get good spring rains. The drought to our west is one reason that Lake Texoma is so low....there's not enough watering flowing down the rivers and into the lake. Dawn

My speakers "plug" directly in to the CPU. They were working fine until I hooked up the new monitor. I suspect that there might be a conflict and I need to somehow bypass the speakers that are part of the monitor. I know that the mute all is off etc. and have tried to reboot, and most suggestions but nothing has worked. I think I need to somehow disconnet the monitor speakers. Thanks in advance.

* Product Description: Acer B193 Bbdmh, LCD display, TFT, 19" * Device Type: LCD display / TFT active matrix * Color: Black * Built-in Devices: Stereo speakers * Diagonal Size: 19" * Max Resolution: 1280 x 1024 / 75 Hz * Display Positions Adjustments: Height, swivel, tilt * Color Support: 24-bit (16.7 million colors) * Response Time: 5 ms * Image Brightness: 250 cd/m2 * Image Contrast Ratio: 10000:1 (dynamic) * Digital Video Standard: Digital Visual Interface (DVI) * Audio Output: Speaker(s), stereo, integrated * Signal Input: DVI, VGA * Compliant Standards: TCO '03, MPR II, TCO '99 * Environmental Standards: EPA Energy Star * Manufacturer Warranty: 3 years warranty those are the specs for that monitor, I agree Acer makes a very good LCD. that one does have both inputs and has nice specs. That one does have the built in speakers, mine does not but I use stand alone speakers anyway. In the 19" monitors yes you can still find the non widescreen models but I have not seen any in the larger size monitors which are non widescreen. If you have not set up and used a buy.com account before there are some codes available that will save you some money on that purchase for first time buyer. I use buy.com quite often. first time Buy.com customers only don't worry about expiration dates they are always available just google buy.com promo codes and you can find them.

I took the new monitor back to Best Buy. The "geek" girl hooked it up to a computer. She couldn't get any sound to come out so she told me it doesn't have integrated speakers. I told her that I had used a wire with greenish/yellow ends going from the monitor to the computer. So she found one, plugged it in and turned on some music. I couldn't hear it over the noise of the store. She had me lean way in over the counter, and said "Can't you hear it?" I said "Yes, barely, but shouldn't it be louder than that?" She told me that she didn't think there was anything wrong with it, she just thought it was made to not be very loud. They let me exchange it for another like it and it's the same, half the volume or less of my older one. I guess HP wasn't selling enough external speakers so they thought by reducing the volume on the cheap monitors they'd sell some.