A local tileshop in Pittsburgh has a basketweave where the white pieces are slightly curved. On the sample board I didn't care for it as much as pictures of straight ones, and she quoted $12/sq.ft. That doesn't mean it's different that the one you have in NJ, the saleslady was completely unhelpful. Do either of you have any pictures of the basketweave from Standard Tile? On another note, a local tile shop says Walker Zenger sells a white and black basketweave, and quoted me $8.70/sq.ft. It wasn't in the brochure and his sample board was loaned out, so I can't say what it looks like.

"Let us get under the hood, clean up some functionality, delete those pesky temp files, update existing software and remove unwanted programs to keep your computer in best condition possible." NOTHING they did was so technical that you couldn't have done it yourself in an hour or so. It was more of a tire pressure check, empty the trash, and fill the gas tank than a "tune-up". Somewhere in my backups I have a whole "housecleaning for Windows" file left over from a writing job I had. Basically you remove software you aren't using, back up data that is no longer active (last year's taxes, whatever) delete stray files (your kid's old game saves,), find and kill any "TMP" files left behind by bad-mannered software, and then defrag the drive. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/3493358/how-defrag-in-windows-7-windows-8/ And this, on controlling what starts at boot-up. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/3446457/stop-programs-launching-when-windows-8-boots/ Basically, don't boot anything you don't use daily ... ======== The speed difference can be AMAZING. This post was edited by lazygardens on Thu, Jun 19, 14 at 18:00

I just bought an external drive this week and love it. Apart from being able to free up space on C:\, it is good for arranging automatic backups. I have it set to back up all of my documents, music, and pictures 4 days a week at a time when I am not going to be using the computer. Until now, I had been putting these backups on CDs and DVDs, but it is too easy to forget to make those backups, and it is also a nuisance saving and keeping track of the disks I saved them on. I like the way I can just drag things to the icon for the external drive, too. Easier than burning a CD or DVD, and it has the advantage that you can erase things and use that space again, the way you might on a floppy or a zip disk. My external drive is a 500GB Maxtor that I found on sale Mon. at Fry's in San Diego, for only $99.99. (They seem to change the products on sale from day-to-day, so I don't guarantee anyone will find the same thing at the same price another day. DH paid the same there the day before I did, but he only got a 300GB Maxtor external hard drive) Today a friend who has a business servicing other companies' computers told me he considers Western Digital's hard drives to be among the best, so you got a good one. However, I was happy when he also said I had gotten a bargain. Guess this is the time of year to look for bargains in computer stuff! I probably should mention that since my FireFox browser's "Bookmarks" (=Favorites in I.E.) and things I have saved in its "Scrapbook" add-on, or extension, are not located in My Documents and thus do not come under the automatic backing up, I am going to take care to back them up to the external drive manually every few days.

2boyz, you asked if we still like our Ark floors. We are really happy with the way the floors look but we have a golden retreiver so our floors are scratched. The scratches have not damaged the finish, they are more like dents in the wood, but if you look at the right angle you can see them. The scratches from our dog on our old oak floors were much more evident because the flooring had a gloss to it. Our Ark flooring does not have a sheen to it and the slight distressing helps to hide the scratches, but I know they are there! We don't have any areas where the wood has chipped and you see a lighter, unstained color. I love the width of the planks, the color, the very slight bevel but I believe there is just no way to avoid scratches on hardwood floors. So, yes I still am happy with my Ark flooring!