What great options. Digitizing a lifetime of music, voice recordings, movies, etc sure is time consuming. But it's wonderful there are so many options out there. Raven- I had forgotten all about Heartland catalogue. It's been probably 20 years since I ordered from them. Those are some great gadgets. The one with lp too is a bit pricey - esp. since I have a cd recorder connected to my turntable. It's a lot less convenient than having it by the computer - but it works well. The one for just tapes looks good. Grandms'- I don't need the turntable portion, but your post made me think that with the right cables (do you happen to know what they are?) I should be able to hook up my old compact stereo/cassette player to my computer. My question about that has always been that I don't think i have an input into my sound card. Does that mean I have an integrated sound card (without its own input port). But there must be cables that could transfer from a stereo to a usb port. Heck - are there cables that go to a firewire port - or perhaps that's overkill for music files. What's Pyro? Did that come with turntable - or just a program you have? I assume Roxio cd creator could do that - burn a cd? how did you find Cakewalk easier than Audacity? I think I've heard good things about both. And Urlee and Jean love Audacity and find it easy. So I'd appreciate any other thoughts in deciding which software to use? Thanks. Lynn.

I have the minimum data plan on my phone, with the phone I got, smartphone, you are required to have a data plan, I am with Att. What I do is go into settings and turn off mobile network for Internet. That way I know I am not using up my data plan, but I can access the Internet via wifi with no costs, at home I have wifi so I can use it all I want or any where I have a wifi connection. Now if I am out and about and find I need to access the Internet and no wifi around then I go to settings and turn on the mobile data connection. I can then connect to the Internet to get the information I need then turn it back off. I have an app on my phone that keeps track of exactly how much I have used on both the mobile network and wifi. One thing that will eat up your data plan is if you allow the apps and stuff on the phone to update automatically, because if they all decide to update when you are on the mobile connection that definitely uses up quite a bit. If I turn on my mobile network I always go to settings before that and turn off auto updates, so I know nothing will be using it but me for what ever I am looking up. I learned that fast, the first day I had my phone and checked my data used I already had used over 20 mb and my plan is only 200mb for the whole month. I don't use texting so I don't have it in my plan but I didn't know that at first so I texted a few people and sent pictures in texts I found out those were charged to me individually and the picture ones were quite expensive. I don't do that ever. So if you can do it this way you can get away with the minimal data plan of 200mb if you will be using mostly the mobile network instead of wifi I would go for a larger data plan. You can definitely go up in plan size not sure about down.

If you want to talk about power flow through batteries and electrical devices, I'll put it separate so as not to confuse the above. You're right - draw and pull aren't really the right words to use. They're colloquialisms I've used for years in my job. "This pulls 10 amps," etc. The best analogy, and the one that was often used in my education, is to liken the flow of electricity to that of water in a pipe. A higher amp circuit is a bigger pipe. A higher voltage circuit is like a pipe with higher water pressure. The current-using device is like the faucet you open or close. Higher pressure (voltage) and lower resistance (Ohms) are what will increase the current (amps) through the circuit. Amps do not exist until current begins flowing. Amperage ratings of power delivery equipment refer to the maximum allowable amperage the circuit or device can safely carry. Amperage ratings of power consuming equipment refer to the maximum amperage they'll carry in normal operation. To relate that to this discussion, it should now be clear why a higher amperage charger is fine: it's merely a bigger pipe that can deliver more current if needed. That doesn't mean the current will flow - the voltage and resistance will determine that - but that it can flow if needed, exactly as I started in my analogy of the night light and the microwave oven. Charging batteries is an interesting area, because you can observe what happens with a device called a Kill-a-Watt that indicates the wattage used by any device you plug into it. I have a 12-volt car battery that is one of those "booster" batteries you can use to jump-start your car if there's no other car around. You charge this battery with a supplied plug-in charger. If the battery is heavily discharged, the charging wattage will show about 14, but as the battery nears a full charge, the wattage slowly drops to about 2, and at that point you can unplug the charger. This happens because as the charger continues to supply a constant voltage, the charging current drops as the battery's internal voltage nears that of what the charger is delivering. This all occurs not as a function of any type of computerized circuitry in the charger, nor as a result of the charger's maximum amp rating, but simply because of how current flows in the battery charging process. "Smart" chargers can affect the charge rate of a battery by applying different voltages at different phases of the charging process, as batteries of different chemistry do better with faster, slower charges or other specific things, such as high voltage early and low voltage late in the charge, or whatever. Most cell phones today have charge control circuitry to somewhat counter the detrimental effects of constant overcharging, as people frequently do when they charge the phone all night while it's still turned on and they're asleep.

Any app that pushes notifications to your phone, especially social media apps like Facebook tend to suck up battery life. Email can do the same thing, if possible turn "down" the frequency in which the phone checks for new messages. One thing I read, and it won't solve your battery problem, is to let the phone's battery completely die. That "resets" the how the phone calculates battery life. It won't improve your battery but rather give you a more accurate reading. OnePlus is a Chinese company that makes unlocked phones that approach "flagship" quality at a more modest price point. Kind of like buying a Buick or Oldsmobile instead of a Cadillac. The biggest advantage to unlocked phones is that you can typically use them on any carrier and you won't be locked into any service agreements because you're buying the phone upfront. They also tend to be free of any "bloatware" the carrier may add. The biggest drawback is that the carriers don't support them so if you have a problem, you'll have to get support from the manufacturer. Unfortunately what can happen is the carrier blames it on the phone, the phone manufacturer blames it on the carrier leaving you in the middle. I have an unlocked Google Nexus that I use on AT&T. The phone cost about $400 and my service is about $44 per month. I've only had one problem, several years ago, where the phone wouldn't make calls on LTE (on 3G it worked just fine). I never got an answer to the actual problem but from what I could gather, AT&T was testing new software or something on their network and the phone couldn't handle it. AT&T blamed Google, Google blamed AT&T but the problem disappeared about 3 weeks later and the phone has worked perfectly since.