Thanks to bpgreen and Raven, I am now sitting here with my beautiful laptop dream machine! Yep! I am up and running fine now. My server must have been working on their end or the weather caused me to get knocked off so much when I first tried being on the net with that external modem. I thought it was the modem but it is working fine! "LUV" ya all for help making my dream come true. Seeing I am not getting knocked off, I DL'd some programs which only got half done before when getting knocked off. Audacity for one. Got my spyware and virus programs from my flashdrive. Now for the goodies, huh? Bless you all. I have to get to bed now. This is the latest being up on the puter for me! Can't blame me for basking in no disconnects. "LOL" Good night. Hugs, Urlee PS: Sorry you all can't see this beautiful laptop. LOVE the fact I can ZOOM to make the fonts larger for reading and typing just by using the % drop down on the bottom right on Windows 7 here.

We recently finished our basement and made it into both a family room/playroom and an office down there for dh, who works full time from home. We had room for a closet under the basement steps, so we wired the closet with a full out network panel, cable, phone, etc then we hardwired network jacks throughout the basement. Now the modem/router/printer/fax sit in the closet and all the PC's (hubby has several, plus the kids have them in the playroom and oh yeah, our Tivo is hooked up to the network as well) are hardwired to network jacks throughout the basement. Any pc's we need upstairs (my laptop for instance) can print or access the network via wireless. It's not a practical solution if you're working with an existing room (I LOVE allison's - that's brilliant!!!) but if you're remodeling or installing wiring, the "command center closet" is definitely the way to go.

fori wrote: I open a cabinet, stand back, and throw to the highest shelf. There is always room because it's too high for anything. That way, I have to use a chair or summon the spouse if I want the chocolate chips. Not really hidden, but it slows me down. Oh, you meant hide from someone else? LOL!!! Yeah, I do this. Actually, I have a "hoarding" quirk where I like to save things that I really really like and eat them a bit at a time, over time. As a child, I used to save my Halloween candy because I got so much joy out of just the thought that I *had* it and wondering which piece I'd eat next. It's a great quirk to have for avoiding weight gain *but* it gets unfortunate when I take too long and the good stuff goes bad and I feel guilty for money down the drain. :-)

Brad covered this well. I had a single duplex outlet installed above all of my fireplaces, as well as 1x coax and 1x cat6 in the another duplex box. True I don't want a TV in every single room over every fireplace, but I wanted the option to. A picture or a mirror over the fireplace covers these. Something Brad posted (and most people miss) is the studs which a TV mount bolts in to. Most TV mounts are 16" wide, but you want the mount centered. If you have a telescoping arm on the mount, they almost never sit centered and are offset. This is why what Brad did is great, as it lets you put the mount wherever it needs to go without modifying anything. True they make very good toggle bolts that just grip the sheetrock, buy why not use wood studs if you can? Also, take good photos of every single one so you know what you working with once everything is done I also ran extra conduit (smurf tube, flexible pvc, etc) from each of these to my unfinished basement. IMO all of my "over the fireplace TV's" will never have any boxes connected to them, but ya never know. You can also transfer HDMI signal over cat6 if you really need to (say for security cameras, not a 4k movie...) so some people run 2x cat6 cables everywhere just to future proof. I didn't Plan an "IT rack" space somewhere in your house. Most use an unfinished basement room, the cabinets can be locked etc so that part is up to you. Yes everything is wifi today, but hardwired is always better and more reliable. Depending on the size of your house, most will do a WAP (wireless access point) system instead of a single bulky wifi router that sits on your basement IT rack or another bad spot. Planning a WAP puts your wifi router in the best possible location in your house, or you could do 2 or 3 WAPs to make sure there's no dead zones etc. Anyway, these need cat6 ran (from your rack) to their location (and sometimes 110v outlet so plan hardware now). Same with security cameras. If you want them or to wire for them, that all needs to feed to your IT box Put your IT box on its own circuit. It might not pull a ton of power on it's own, but you don't want a vacuum cleaner tripping a breaker on accident and killing your data signal for the entire house.