Honestly the best advice I feel I can give you is to hit some of the forums dedicated to the type of work you will be doing and ask them for advice since they are using the type of equipment and computer programs you will be needing, they will have much more experience in that field. Same as I would tell someone wanting a killer gaming pc to go frequent some of the gaming boards and ask for advice there. I can give you some generals, I personally much prefer AMD to Intel just from personal use and experience. The more Ram the better no matter what applications you will be running. Dual or Quad processors will be able to do much more than single and with these type apps that would probably be very helpful. You will definitely want a very large hard drive and probably a good size backup USB hard drive to store files on. Your sound card would be something I would be asking about for sure. cakewalkForums Sonar and Cakewalk Users Forum KVR Forum this one has a section on the forum specific to computers and setup. You probably know some others and you can of course google for more. others here may know more specifics.

Here's something I made 15 years ago, along that line: Close up: I bought the sheet music, postcards and photos at an antique store. Did not want to ruin any old pictures I had. Tore deeds to use as the background. Brown paper is a grocery bag crumpled up, then "antiqued" with antiquing liquid bought at Michael's (looks like leather). I used a large stretched canvas from Michael's (use coupon for 40% off). I used either textured papers or lace behind pictures Used antiquing liquid again to tone down whites. Trinkets from around the house - buttons, single silver earring I used to wear as a teenagers, keys, large metal thing from side of sewing machine (spray painted) and a tiny ring DD2 gave me when she was in preschool. I thought it needed something after finishing, so I added the upholstery tacks at each corner. Also like using the black photo corners - gives it that "old" feeling.

I have them, and have used the same ones for nearly thirty years since I got my new ones when I married and changed my name. When I was younger, and my friends were younger, we all used more of them when everyone was wedding-ing and christening and generally having a ball playing with our (new) grown-upness. At a later point in my life we lived in cities where the customs were more formal so I used lots of them again, but now that we are nestled in the country I don't find a lot of places where they fit. I'm sure there are circles in Boston, NY, Washington, Palm Beach, etc. where visiting cards are still quite common. And in the capitals of Europe and South America, they are still in use, as well. Mine read: Mrs Husband's First Name, Husband's Middle Name, Husband's Last Name. And nothing else, although having an abbreviated local address would be acceptable, and I may have that added to the die next time before I get a more engraved as I am now living in a family house and expect to be here forever. My visiting card is just barely off-white and utterly plain other than the engraved name. One purchases the engraving dies, which is expensive the first time, then simply orders more as necessary. (One small cost of getting divorced is having to get a new die made.) And there is generally nothing on them except your formal name, or in the case of the other set I have, which I use much less often, Mr & Mrs Husband's First Name, Middle Initial and Last Name. (I use the Mr & Mrs cards mostly for enclosing with funeral flowers, weddding presents, or for post dinner party B&B flowers.) My personal visiting cards are still useful for enclosing with flowers (I keep a small supply at my city florist for this purpose) and for gift enclosures in certain settings; for making formal calls in the few remaining circumstances in my life that require it and very, very, rarely for handing out on the fly like business cards. I do keep a couple in an old sterling cigarette case in my purse for those times. But one wouldn't want to hand them out like common business cards since they can be pretty pricey. I think the last time I re-ordered (more than a decade ago) they were about 75 cents each, and that was a pretty large quantity since we were then living in a very formal situation. One other thing, too, as a rule ladies don't give out their visting cards (or leave them when paying a social call) to men, only to women. But there's nothing to stop you from inventing, and using, a more personalized version of the conventional business card with name, address, pictures, myspace data, mini dvd's or your baby's sonogram. But these are probably more accurately termed simply personal cards not visiting or calling cards. Molly

A new memory card to be used in a camera should always be formatted in the camera before its first use. However, unlike IowaGirl's standard practice, you shouldn't reformat it every time you reinsert the card into the same camera. You will only shorten its life that way. A card, generally speaking, can only be reformatted a certain number of times. The better quality card can be reformatted more times than a lesser quality card, but, nonetheless, it will reach the end of its "formattable life" sooner or later -- sooner if you reformat a lot. And there's really no reason to reformat it unless it's acting up. Many memory cards intended for use in cameras come with free image recovery software. When you delete a picture (or a data file), it is still recoverable as long as it hasn't become corrupted. When you delete something, it's not really removed from the card/disk/hard drive. All that happens is that a command is given that the area of the media that was used to store that image/file is now available to be used for something else to be saved. And there is more sophisticated software available that can recover images/data files even after something new has been saved over it -- that's what happens, for example, when forensic teams work with hard drives when crimes are committed.