We have two of these Kohler lo- flows, about 2 years old. We just figured out why black filmy crud keeps dumping into bowl from tank. As the tank doesn't empty after one-flip flush, the micro-organisms in the tank, as well as accumulated elements, build up to a point where it looks like the slimey sludge pit of some pre-historic cave dweller. Two treatments of bleach, and it seems to have cleared. We're hoping a periodic (weekly?) total flush will help clear "old" water and prevent the build-up. Anyone else having this issue?

The Toshiba A135 received a Very Good rating from cnet. Cnet doesn't give very many $1000 affordable laptops that high of a rating. I recently bought the A135 2877, I believe is the model, the one with 2 gs of mem. (would recommend 2 gigs minimum for vista, from what I hear. It has a 180g hard drive, actually two seperate hard drives, a 100g plus an 80g. Great for backing up your system. With this much memory and hd space, you could collect a sizeable video and audio library (were talking hundreds of songs and movies). It runs Vista flawlessly. Yes, there are faster systems out there. I would have loved one with the Nvidia graphics card, which would give you a whopping 512m of shared graphics memory. The Intel that comes with the A135 has 256megs, acceptable. For about $1100 at costco online, I thinks it's one of the best deals out there. It was about $300 more than I wanted to spend on a laptop, but I'm just thinking where technology is going today, with streaming video, tv and music becomming more and more prevailant, before too long, anything less that 2 gigs of memory and a harddrive less than 100 gigs will probably be obsolete in the next couple years. I think this will be sufficient for our needs for some years to come. -- john

So with the activity light coming on we now know the power is there on both drives. Normally after that period of slower flashing it would/should start to flash much quicker indicating it is reading the CD but you do not get that. Try checking the Device manager click Start click Control panel click System click Hardware click Device manager Now in this new window look for yellow exclamation or question marks. Double click on any if they are present and see what it brings up. If no yellow marks then look for and double click on DVD/CD ROM drives, click the various tabs looking for error messages or it telling you the device is working properly. When you try a CD are you using a music CD or some software program? Try a music CD then open Windows Media Player and see what happens when you try to play the music. We might be clutching at straws here but if you exhaust all avenues before spending your money on a repairman it might be worth it.

Michigoose, you don't need any of that. The great thing about the Janome 300E is that all you need is a software that isn't expensive like Embird, (you can have a 30 day free trial), a flash card, and an adapter to fit it into your machine. I bought the same machine last october and you're going to love it. Go to any shop that sells camera and ask for the smallest compact flash card they have. Also, ask for an adapter - the person who sold you the machine shoulld be able to tell you exactly what you need - my adapter's in the machine working right now so I can't get it out to look. (e-mail me later if you need that info). That's all you need machine-side. For the computer, my printer has a port for the compact flash card - if you don't have one of those, you need to buy a reader/writer that slots into a USB port. These things are all REALLY cheap! Go to the website below and download embird. The lady who owns that site is wonderful and will help you if needed. Embird allows you to convert designs to .Jef format, resize designs, see them sewing out, change colours, etc. You save the design you like onto the flashcard, put it into the adapter, slot that into your machine and off you go. Don't let anyone tell you you have to have the amazing box etc. Have fun!! There's so much free / cheap stuff out there. Here is a link that might be useful: my embroidery haven