My friend Dave Slater just brought over my new computer, a Dell Optimax 3GHz with 4GB RAM and a 400GB HD. It's really cool, and so much faster than my old XP klunker. Goes well with my 1280 x 1024 flatscreen LCD monitor. It's runni9ng Windoze 7, which isn't as bad a Vista was (thank the Gods), but some of my software won't run on it, so I'm going to have to run those on my Toshiba XP laptop.
There's a free download from Microsoft that creates an XP virtual machine on your Windows 7 PC, so that you can run some of the legacy software out there that doesn't run on Win7. We use it at work quite successfully. I'll find a link and get it to you so you can get that downloaded and installed. Should help you immensely, from the sound of things.
Thanks, Patrick. I'm downloading as we speak. The computer is working great, and I've got it connected to the'Net now. My aethernet cable was only a 6 footer, and I needed more. Dave brought a 10 footer over this morning and I've been going to all my habitual sites and getting the machine to remember all my logins. This thing is much faster than my old one - I can even watch You-tube videos, which wasn't the case before. B)
I've named my machine Penelope, after Odysseus' wife - my laptop is Odysseus. I use the Odysseus as my GM's shield when gaming, with my webpage and all my gaming stuff (including .PDFs of all my books) on it. It has a 36 Gb HD, so I've got lots of space.
I'm hoping to get a game session together soon, since I left the gang on a cliff-hanger. The last scheduled session I had to cancel since I was 4 days out of gallstone surgery. Gotta love that OxyContin. Weird dreams, though...