Yes, I would agree that my kids are very tough on CDs and DVD's, one scratch will render a $20 movie useles. For this reason, I copy most of my CD's onto my hard drive, where I can either watch them on my computer, transfer them to my Ipod or burn to a DVDRW disk for a backup (for personal use within my own home, of course.) I found two programs that enable me to do this seemlessly. One is Slysoft, Any DVD, available at at www.slysoft.com. When installed, this pgm runs in the background, and it will "decode" any decription written into most store bought CDs to prevent copyright infringement. The other program is Vault 360, available at www.bambootech.com, which will format all your movies into the correct format to download and play on your ipod, PSP, or PDA device. Of course, be aware that copyright law prohibits the use of such software for any other use but backing up a dvd or cd to protect from wear or accidental damage, etc. --John

Easiest way of course is to network the two computers with a switch or router depending on how you connect ... If of course you can use the program download that you have already paid for that is on your Desktop. Or you maybe can, if it has an available, or possible temporary borrow a slot and put a wifi pci card in the desktop then its simple ad/hoc to wireless transfer anything ,,, online prices I often notice are in the $15 area for wifi pci cards. Or try out openoffice.org ,, free alternate to the MS office group of many programs.

Thx for the responses. I'm pretty much a homebody due to health issues and do mostly all my shopping online. The internet has been a boon to me. Win 8.1 on an HP. All that's on it (that I can find) are a few games with very limited usage. Then you have to buy or join the gaming group and purchase 'coins' and pay as you play. I've checked Amazon, my #1 go to place. They've so many games, I was weary from wading thru them. Hence the decision to find the three or four I listed. I also have an iPad and have an assortment of word games that I enjoy when I have time. I'll check out the Jigsaw puzzle link. Sheila

Well - it took a little back and forth with the file extension fixes. If anyone else is following this thread, the link Mikie posted is great, as are Zep's instructions. I found that I also needed to read the instructions more carefully. At first I downloaded the larger "open it" program. Then I saw to just download the fix for the .exe program. Once that was extracted, I actually had to right click and select merge. The first time, it allowed me to install firefox and ccleaner, but not the newer java. I went through the sequence again. Eventually got everything updated, downloaded and installed. Damcoy: - while I was struggling before the .exe fix, right clicking on the downloaded file did not bring up the option to run as administrator. So I guess that didn't stick. Thanks everyone. Lynn.