There is another post here this week asking about lcd monitors you might look for it. I have a 19" Acer and Love it. As I said on that thread one of the main reasons I chose Acer is the 3 yr warranty, plus the fact it is an awesome monitor. Most only come with a 1 yr warranty. The prices on the Acers lately have been great. I have seen them at around $179-$189 range. I got mine at Buy.com. It is also a super simple monitor to add to you system it is fully plug and play no drivers to mess with no software to load. The most important thing to consider is the connections, do you need analog or digital or can you use either one. Check on your pc to make sure you get a monitor that has the correct connections. This is the spec info on my Acer and it works and looks great. It does everything I need it to do. I use analog because I use a KVM switch for connection of all my computers to my one monitor, works flawlessly and even in linux it has no problems. Product: Acer AL1916 Type: LCD Monitor Specifications: * 19ⳠTFT LCD * 1280 x 1024 native resolution * 500:1 contrast ratio * 140° /140° horizontal/vertical viewing angles * Analog D-sub input only * 250 cd/m2 brightness * 12ms response time * Black finish * Dimensions: 16.2Ⳡ(W) x 6.8Ⳡ(D) x 16.1Ⳡ(H) I did not need speakers on my monitor since I have a nice set of speakers. Some monitors have a USB hub built in to their base that is a nice added bonus but this one does not have that, I have a stand alone USB hub on my desk so I did not need it. Here is the newer Acer 19" widescreen at Tiger direct for $179 you can read the specs and see user reviews. The ratio aspect looks absolutely fine on mine, I use it for regular daily pc use, not for any type of extensive photo or video processing. Here is a link that might be useful: tiger direct

Ourbigdig - Honed! Are you in Boston? Your slab looks quite like mine that was from Marble and Granite down south. Check out the posting which includes my story about how I ended up with honed supreme (super...whatever) white quartzite and I am thrilled/so glad that we did not get the polished (though I suspect I would be biased the other way if we ended up with polished.) There was some other discussion that talked about honed quartzite that you can search for. Here is a link that might be useful: Link to my story about honed quartzite

We sent our kids away to college with the PC type of their own choice, the PC being a HS graduation gift. My oldest daughter chose to get a Macbook and has been an iPhone/Macbook user ever since. She's the only devoted Mac user in the family, another kid alternates and the others don't use Apple products. The oldest is now a 30-something professional. She has never gone more than 3 years with a Mac without having a catastrophic problem and a number of times it's been almost annually. Fried motherboards (several times), crashed and non-functional hard drives (several times), a delaminated display (once), complete battery failures (several times), and other things I don't remember. She always gets the maximum available extended warranty (and laughs about needing it) but buys a new unit before the warranty expires or soon after any major problem. She's moved several times in her adult life and one of the essential bits of info when moving to a new area is to find where the Apple Stores are. She considers herself to have been serially unlucky with Macs but prefers them all the same. She can well afford to replace these things as frequently as she has to. She gets longer useful lives from her iPhones but I think replaces them at about 3 years. Do I consider this to be indicative of something? Not necessarily. Technology products from any manufacturer have exceptional individuals and lemons and everything in-between. It's funny she's had consistently bad luck with hardware quality. Apple's products aren't anything special when it comes to manufacturing or component quality.

Yes i made it through but it was a hassle- not at all with cords, etc. Just with the personalization, software/app downloads, etc. MS really makes it easy in some ways-- my files mostly came over with OneDrive.. bookmarks come with edge.. but I didn't store all things in bookmarks. I use browser history for many often used sites/applications. I went down at about 10am worked on the old laptop for an hour and then switched to the new one and was fully functional around 12:30pm. I could attend my 300 meetings this afternoon and will try to complete the personalization and configurations when I am done with work for the day. Just ill-timed.. and given meetings and deadlines, a stress I didn't need. Again, I know better.. but luckily I know enough about setup that I could get through it. My system is pretty much work focused other than the browser and file storage so I think i am through the worst of it. We'll see.. i am sure I will keep discovering apps I need to download. Thanks for the commiseration! I *really* thought I was going to have an easy morning. My bad for saying as much aloud! LOL