Any computer can be considered unworthy by someone, because a lot of it is nebulous and personal taste. For example, for my previous computer purchase, I bought a cheapie laptop because I had all the bells and whistles I needed at work so the last thing I wanted to do at home was use a computer. So I just bought something for e-mail and online shopping at home. THEN, I lost my job. Now I work from home a ton, and my DVD player that was attached to my TV went out and I can't afford a new one so I am using my laptop for watching movies, which I also do a ton more since I replaced expensive cable that I didn't care much for with Netflix. I use this as an example because even though you maybe bought a little more than you think you need, you never know where your life will take your or where technology will take us in the future. I know I paid 100 dollars more for getting a new Sony laptop, with the sole reason being I didn't have to struggle with the keyboard the way I did with all the other ones I tried, and I know I will be typing a ton in graduate school. So I have some remores at paying 100 more for a computer that is not that much better than the cheaper ones, but I KNOW I will be thanking myself later when I am knee deep in my doctoral disseration and am spending hours on it. It's very hard to know how to parcel out financial priorities in these difficult times, and THAT I DO think is worth discussing on a forum. I say, if you CAN, pay a little more to get a little more which will stand you in good stead for the future. But other people will say, get the minimum and live with it. Neither school is right or wrong. But once you have decided, own your decision and don't look back, IMHO. Because you are just going to get conflicting advice from the two camps til the cows come home. If you made what YOU thought was a good decision, stand by it. . . . Of course that is just my opinion, lol!

I am not sure what you are asking, auzzy.... We are already planning to move the door opening to a different wall to better utilize the floor space in the small bathroom. if we do a regular door, the swing area will be right where one would stand to wash hands at the sink, but the door would not open against the vanity, but against the opposite wall. In using the bathroom door, one would need to step back away from the vanity (further into the room) in order to operate the door. We're thinking that the pocket door would avoid that. In our house, locks are rarely, if ever used. And the teenager daughter spends a lot of time at the mirror in the bathroom. We often open the door to tell her to hurry up or she'll miss the bus, etc. With a swinging door we'd hit her with the door. I guess that's not a totally valid reason to choose a pocket door though. it's more that I am theorizing that it will make the bath's interior space feel bigger not to have the door swing taking up literally half the open floor space... Here's the current layout. Notice how the door and vanity placement mean that the only really useable floor space is directly in front of the toilet, just that tiny spot! Here's what we are planning to do to maximize the floor space. So... the question is whether a pocket door in this case would make the space more useable? (The pocket door would slide into the wall next to the vanity.)

I may be wrong, but I think you can only use external drives as main drives if they're SCSI or SATA. If you're dealing with USB devices, they're too slow. Some programs will not install on external drives. I may be misreading Ravencajun's last sentence. If you're looking for an external drive, you want to make sure you get something that is a portable drive. It would probably include all the cables. For a laptop replacement drive, you don't need the cables. What is probably the easiest way to upgrade a laptop hard drive is to get one of these EZupgrade enclosures with a drive. The nice thing about the enclosure is that it will work for either SATA or ATA. It includes software so that you can basically do the image and restore in one step, then just swap drives. Since your laptop is 5 years old and had a 6 gb drive to start, it's probably ATA/IDE/EIDE rather than SATA. You could get something like this with the EZ upgrade for less than $100. You'd put the new drive in the enclosure, run the software to clone the drive, turn everything off, pull the current drive, put in the new one and if all goes well, you can just start right up.

Ms. Rose, do you have a Micro Center in your area? They have a web site but when you go into their stores, unlike a lot of the Best Buy folks, the people who work there are VERY educated in what they sell and the prices are great. My uses are very similar to yours. I've owned a lot of laptops and have paid a lot of money for extra's I never used. My favorite so far has been smaller sized, inexpensive HP's and Compaqs (400.00 or less) with a key pad on the board. They have all the features needed like micro card slots, usb ports, ample ram and hard drive space but are lighter and easier to move around with. After having an 18 inch mammoth HP and hating it, I'll never go larger than 15 inch again. It hasn't happened yet, but I am glad that if after a couple of years something does go wrong with the unit, it won't cost an arm and a leg to replace. Micro Center also has a great warranty program if that's something you are interested in. One thing that people don't usually think about but is really important is to know where the vent fans are for your system. HP used to build them on the bottom causing the units to get very hot. They've now redesigned them to vent on the side, but I'm not sure if all manufactures have done that yet. Also, I know a lot of people are happy with them, but my husband is an IT computer guy and a Dell employee; he's very familiar with their products and feels they are not what they used to be and are over priced for what you get. Here is a link that might be useful: Micro Center