yesican, The "numbers" on your computer are all good, and I assume you're using XP Home for your operating system. The only improvement you may want to consider is upgrading your RAM to 512 Mbytes or even 1 GBbyte. This will not been seen/felt, however, doing email/web browsing. If you're doing hi-tech "gaming" and graphics and/or you keep a lot of process up at the same time, you'll benefit from additional memory. I did not intend to imply that dsl would not increase you data transfer rate with the ISP (AOL or whoever), I said that may not be your total problem. You've got plenty of computer power, so I again suggest you go online and do web browse to anything big, say a news story from the AOL home page, then click on it and bring up your data (dial-up) status and see if data if smoothly flowing. If is is not, then dsl will not be a "total" fix. And too, what is your dial up data speed? The dial-up status will show you that too, it is in the top portion of the display. Looking I see mine is now running at 46.6 Kbps, down from the usual 52.0 Kbps, but I'm on a different phone line than normal. As noted just above, the speed depends a lot on the condition of the phone wire all the way to the central office and the distance, I am about 5 miles form the telephone office and last time I checked they were not providing dsl service to my location. I haven't checked lately and technology keeps improving, but being at or past the maximum distance would put my service at the lower level of the offered service. Speaking of dish/satellite t.v. are your happy with the t.v. service? I'm thinking about dropping my cable t.v. (Patriot Media) because I consider it overpriced. Some have told me satellite t.v. doesn't work in heavy weather: rain for example. What's your experience?

Click on Start - Control Panel - Programs and Features; In your list of installed programs, look to see if you have installed any toolbars ( Yahoo toolbar, MSN toolbar, Google toolbar, etc.) If you have any toolbars installed, uninstall them. Toolbars are notorious for slowing down a computer system. Unless you are purposely using the toolbar of a particular installed program, the toolbar is of no use for you, except to slow down your system.

Marilyn Sue, its Sunday, so that calls for fried chicken, rice and gravy, green beans, biscuits, lemon cake, and pickled peaches. I cook before we go to church and have fixed the same Sunday meal for the past 50 years. Now I will have to change that , for a while would put the roast that cooks at 225 in the oven on Sat. night so it would be ready when we walked in from church. This is the only day of the week we eat the high calorie foods. For breakfast on Sundays we have the boney parts of the fried chicken, cream gravy , cream corn, and in the summer cantaloupe. Growing up all of this was cooked before we left just in case the preacher and his family of five kids came for lunch. Now the preacher doesn't come home with us, most of our folks eat out on Sunday. Love getting up on Sunday mornings, brings back all the memories of life in the 40's and 50's, growing up on the farm. One thing that is different, we don't have to dress the chickens before we start frying.

Usually the dial-up's slowness is tolerable, especially when it costs me $13 a month for 50 hrs. That is so nice, friend Cynic, but don't you still have a furbaby? I realized, last night that I better replace the carrier I lent out, post haste, whe bad weather roll over us and the sirens went off. Soon the local police and a couple firemen were knocking on Apt doors saying we were under a tornado watch, and we had to go into the center hall, which we did but I didn't have anything to put Buster in and he is too big and strong for me to hold him. So when we got the all clear, I started researching for a new carrier. Even when the fire alarm goes off in the building occasionally, the first thing I would do is put him in his carrier...just in case. So far they all have been false alarms, but It is unthinkable for me to leave him behind in case of an emergency. We lost two kitties in a fire we had in 1990, because I couldn't find them and the firemen made me leave the place. That still haunts me.