Well I entered the workforce at 16, worked at the local hospital, married when I turned 18 and continued to work until for some reason our family started to increase :o). One of the fortunate ones, I got to be a stay at home mom. When our kids were all in school I did seasonal work at a nursery, this turned into full time and after 5 years was offered a managerial position. I turned it down to become a full time mom again, 'our kids' are now all teenagers, this should be self explanatory LOL. I joined a couple of Garden Clubs, took a judging course, judged fair shows, parlor shows, and helped judge several larger shows for over 20 years. I also took the judging course put on by the Pacific North West Dahlia Conference and started out to become a Dahlia judge but this entailed some travel which I wasn't able to do. I retired from judging last summer and now I get to play in the dirt to my hearts content. After reading all of your accomplishments I had to smile to myself. We who come from all walks of life meet on a common ground to share our love of gardening, it doesn't get any better. Annette

The more I think about it, without an emotional or 'girlie' response, the more I CANNOT believe GW would be allowing malware knowingly! If they have a sponsor ad with it in it, I hope they will do all they can to dispense with it and those responsible for it!! Cyber *intrusion* is a reality I'm afraid and most of us will encounter some level of it if we are actively using our computers. The most we can do, is make sure our protection is always updated (I failed to do that on one) and that we take the next step from 'free' to a more advanced protection (I've done that) and be sure we have them properly registered when we go that next step (failed to do that with Malwarebytes, as I mentioned before). As I pointed out, Malwarebytes did not proactively 'block' the IP I detailed above until I not only had gone the next level, but registered it then BINGO--there it was!!!

GreenieBeanie, I tried the .Mac service and was actually very disappointed in it - but that is a completely personal observation here. On June 18th I instead registered the domain name http://www.myblogpix.com (aptly named) and use it for hosting all my blog pix on my blogs (I maintain three blogs at present). For $11.95 a month I have 2 Gig's of storage, 25 Gigs a month in transfer allocated, and can have up to 25 email addresses that will hold 2 Gigs each. It works for me. I love iPhoto too BTW. It has been my primary means of keeping my photos organized on my Mac. Since I moved to Louisiana on March 15th of this year I've taken over 2,200 photos! Yes, that's a lot, but I figure a digital camera is such a wonderful thing and years from now the photos will still be in pristine condition - no fading, cracking or crumbling. And of course - I make regular backups to DVD to insure I never have to worry about losing my precious photo collection. A few days ago I started writing a Mac Software blog. I plan to add a brief review and link regularly to some kind of useful Mac application I run across. While some may be commercial (shareware) I am planning to try and cover only freeware applications as a rule of thumb. I'm finding my passion for gardening and my passion for computing work so well together it's as though that's how it all was meant to be from the get-go. I am Borg. You will be assimilated... Here is a link that might be useful: My New Mac Software Blog

Get yourself Thunderbird by Mozilla. I actually use web mail.. gmail to be exact. Mozilla can be configured to pull that also. Vista isn't bad. Working with photos has been ok.. I finally went and got my tool bars back (edit / view) and am a lot happier. There's a Windows Vista forum, google Windows Vista Magazine, should be the 1st to come up. They have a lot of information. I've been getting the mag since the 1st issue, it's worth the subscription price. If you work with a lof of photos, you might consider getting a larger hard drive, slaving it to the computer. What I then did was took my backup of "My Documents" from my old computer & put it on the larger slave drive. When you go to save something, a box will pop up. On the left are the usual places to save to (Documents, Pictures) if you navigate to the folder you want, say the "My Documents" on the slave drive, you can drag the icon for it from the right pane to the left, giving you a shortcut. You can also change the location of Documents by right clicking the documents icon on the desktop, click properties, then make sure it's on the "shortcut" tab, then click "open file location".. Next right click that documents, you want the location tab, there's a button that says move. If you click that, navigate to the new documents on the slave drive. You can also navigate to C:\Users\user\Documents then change it from there. Anyway, HTH. I build computers as a hobby, like to go to computer forums to help people out. It's one reason why I put Vista on this computer when I built it even though I already had a Media Center disk. Vista's ok. I like some things way better then XP, but still have to keep my XP computer to use my scanner.. If I would have bought a Mac, my scanner wouldn't be supported there either.. the Mac commercials irk me. Either you'll love Vista or not. Give it time to use it and learn it. Read some of the Vista tips sites (PC Mag has good tips too) to learn how to make it feel the way you like it. The control panel is also a bit different but once you get used to it, it's fine. If you need help, I'm an email away. I also have Windows Live chat. Good luck & enjoy your new computer