I agree right now if you can keep your old pc working for you and wait till windows 7 comes out you will be avoiding having to purchase any upgrades. It will be out in about a year. If you have any friends that have pc knowledge likely they could easily help you install a new hard drive and some RAM, these are things I do myself but my first time I was pretty anxious. I also agree that the desktop is generally the best option unless you travel a lot and would need a laptop for that. My sister just asked me the same question and I talked her into a desktop pretty quickly, if you have not used a laptop try asking a friend with one to let you try it out for an hour or so, feel how the keyboard feels, see how you like the touch pad instead of a mouse, etc. If you have any problems seeing also consider the smaller screen of a laptop. I have pretty severe hand problems so using a smaller keyboard would be very difficult. Sitting in a chair with the laptop on your lap would require some type of laptop desk so you do not block the air flow. As stated updating and replacing parts in a laptop is much more difficult. One thing you could definitely do also rather than install a new hard drive in your pc is buy a stand alone usb backup hard drive and move all your thousands of pictures and music and other files and data to that hard drive and free up your hard drive in the pc, if you did that and got rid of any old programs you no longer need, clean out any junk files and folders, empty the recycle bin, defrag the hard drive you may find you have plenty of room on that 80Gig hard drive. I have been seeing some incredible prices lately on usb hard drives so you could easily find a nice size one for around $50, and you could use that stand alone hard drive with any new computer you buy in the future. Plus no one would have to install it for you, you just plug it into your usb port and then you can access it from your pc just like your other hard drive. Add some RAM to what ever belarc says is your limit for that pc or at least 2 gig and I bet you would be surprised. RAM is cheap. I just bought a 1gig stick for one of my computers and it was less than $20 shipped. If your current pc is a desktop I would also highly suggest turning it off unplug it and open the side panel up and clean out all the dust bunnies, that can really affect the performance of a pc. Cleaning the computer and its components ecost has some very good prices right now this search is for under $50 units but it gives you some ideas. well now you have lots of options and ways to go and up to you to make that big decision. Here is a link that might be useful: usb hard drives

you can view exactly who is logging onto your system through the event viewer, start, control panel, administrative tools event viewer. Look under security you can double click on any item and view the info on it, if you see log-ons that are not you then you have a problem. If you do think you have someone with access to your pc you definitely want to get that stopped immediately. You probably have a trojan on your pc that has given them access. Tell me why you think that is a probability in your case? I can help you try to clean up the pc if you need to. Never ever let anyone(nefarious) have access to your pc. They can use your pc to send out porn or other stuff and it all traces back to your IP address so you would be the one found guilty! also go to start control panel, users/accounts and see if you have any new accounts there other than the ones you set up.

Take a good look at duluthinbloomz helpful entry. This is a good example why I ask questions like this here rather than the Computer Forum. There I would have likely had someone say "check your volume control!" She -- explained exactly where to find the volume control and how to handle it ---- That is my kind of language! I love asking help from people who speak the same language and at the same speed! LOL BTW -- If help didn't come here, I would have had to go to the Computer Help Forum -- but always here first! Thanks everyone! Don't you just wonder if there will ever be a time of not needing those "Dah!" type reminders!

Haha, my Apple loving friends? I didn't say that. I would say that Apple's market share is probably higher with more affluent families, perhaps lower with less. Maybe slightly higher here than elsewhere because Apple is here. But among all the tech industry-involved people I know, engineers and others, I'm aware of only one guy (who writes firmware for NICs and routers) who uses Linux at home. His family revolted and he had to give up and get them a Windows PC. No one else. My location and the people I know are probably more likely than others to lead one to expect Linux home use. But it's really nowhere to be found. You and anyone else should figit with it if it interests you. Doing so tends to attract fix-it and engineer types looking for something to play with. But in this discussion you're extending your own preferences and actions to a wider population, that's invalid reasoning.