I am always amazed when people say they have loads of photos or music that they do not want to lose or cannot replace yet have never backed up these valuables. If your hard drive fails tomorrow you have a very real problem. You are not alone in this and I am not trying to be mean spirited but if you fail to look after you and your possessions then who will? For less than $50 you can buy a name brand DVD-RW and for under $20 you can buy 100 blank DVDs. You can buy a lesser amount of blanks of course, that is a choice you can make. The DVD will come with software you install to use it. Or if you already have blank CDs you could use those in the DVD burner. If you back some of that stuff up and remove it from this computer it may well run faster because you will have more free space on the hard drive for the swap file to work better. Does your activity light come on frequently and stay on for long periods? If so this is an indication the swap file is have a problem. Then if you really want to get carried away you can visit Big Lots where they have (or did recently in the Buffalo, NY store) CD or DVD labels and the software to create your own labels for $10 or $11. Another option would be to install this hard drive as a slave in the new computer you intend to buy. You would need to check that there are compatible data connections in the new computer. Older hard drives are IDE or ATA but the newer and faster technology is SATA.

I bought an Epson v200 flatbed scanner. It scans slides and negatives also. It was around $50 and does an excellent job. It is so fun to have those old pictures in a digital format! Oh the fun things you can do with them. I like to colorize them just a bit, such as the wedding flowers, or the gold on the wedding rings. Having your own scanner is fun.

He is very talented! My favorite is the one titled Houseboat.

Beautiful picture! What are you using to print it with? I tried it with Windows Print Wizard and it printed exactly at 7x5. That would be 7" across and 5" up & down...is that what you are trying for? I am using XP, and I assume you have VISTA, so I don't know if the Print Wizard is different, but I will go through how I did it. I right clicked on the file (I saved it from here) and selected PRINT. I clicked NEXT until I go to the window that said LAYOUT SELECTION and I chose 5x7. It rotated and cropped the print automatically and printed it perfectly without cutting anything off (although I think it may have cropped just a slight amount off - as the dimensions on the picture I saved aren't a true 5x7). Then I just clicked next to continue through the print wizard until the photo printed. I chose to print 1 picture, but you can have it print two 5x7 on one page if you want...just put 2 in the number of copies to print at the bottom of the LAYOUT SELECTION window.