Computer purchasing advice requested please.

[Riverkilt]

Thanks for all the help, here and from PMs.

Four days later I have my laptop back - with an 80 gig new hard drive. Not a lot of data was saved...sad about that, but the hard lesson many of you've mentioned.

The Dell folks in East India sent the replacement start up disc for the one never sent me three years ago - but sent it via air freight to my Post Office box. I'm still waiting...they call every day to see if its here....they don't listen when I explain how remote my little town is.

Anyhow, the local techie put it in after convincing Microsoft he wasn't some sort of pirate. Now, I have to argue with Microsoft to get the key code to open my Word documents because Dell never sent me a key code for Word...they just loaded it on the laptop.

But, even rebuilding its good to have things operational.

Lived without computers once...nice to see I can do it again.

Ron

[mkmound]

. . .

Lived without computers once...nice to see I can do it again.

Ron

Uhh huh . . . and without a computer, you're going to order kilts online how???

And heaven forbid not having access to Xmarks . . .

[Livingston]

That seems to be a problem with tech support from that part of the world, they just don't understand. Good to see you got it going again. Now, get your backup plan in action.

[clancelt]

25 years as an engineer using mostly Unix type boxes from day one. Have never had a Windows machine "grace" my home, but boy what hell they cause at work. We have 2 guys to support every Unix server and one AS/400 and a staff of about 10 to support all of the Windows machines, it's a joke.

Anywho, my first non Unix(although OSX is Unix) workstation machine to use at home was a Ti Powerbook g4 bought in 2002, I am typing on it now in fact. The machine has been bulletproof. Other than a spent batt, it has never failed. No crashes, no lockups, just keeps on purrrrr'n(and I have a development environment installed that I work in almost every night). And btw, I have upgraded the OS twice, in place. Never lost an app or data. Get this, the new OS's ran FASTER!! I have yet to see a new Windows OS run faster on the same hardware after the upgrade.

So, yet another glowing rec for "Get a Mac"

My wife was a hardcore Windows user. I bought her a eMac a few years ago and now she too has joined the Mac heads.