That is the one thing I have noticed since scouring the net and asking everyone and anyone in the know their opinions on who makes the most well put together laptop. It seems that many folks are extreemely loyal to one particular product or brandname, but one brandname doesn't seem to be conclusive over the other. The Imac sure has its very loyal following, as well as Dell and Toshiba and, another brand rapidly picking up steem is HP, especially their DV6000 and DV9000 lines. I am beginning to conclude that at this point, figure out exactly how much of a laptop you need and can afford, paying particular attention to Size of Hard Drive, How much Memory (RAM), and third, how much graphics card, and lastly and most important, the CPU. I have concluded that the duel core processor is important, as it is essentially two processors stapped together, and the OS uses one for certain functions and the other for certain functions, and most importantly, only one is being used and powered when both are not needed, saving battery power and overall electric consumption. Another rule of thumb, to save money, get the base core duo (1.60GHz, I believe), and skip the upgrade on the CPU and get 2G's of RAM, as your CPU runs out of cache space for storage, it will draw from Ram, and adding RAM is much cheaper than adding a high end CPU. Bottom line, I'm waiting for some hot sales. Another thing to think about is size, and yeah, folks, size does matter... Most of the 17" models that I've tried out in the stores just seem too damn big and heavy, especially if your going to use the thing as a LAP top... it's just too damn big for my lap, and I have a big lap at that... the 12" is just too small, especialy for viewing movies, etc. That's the one thing that turned me off from the DELL XPS 1200... hot looking little machine... just too small. 14-15" seems just right for my taste. It seems to me that all these machines (Toshiba, Dell, HP and many others) are all beginning to become clones of one another. Seems they are are made in China nowadays, and no one has yet to convince me overwhelmingly that one is better than the other...

Snidely - good point about not removing things if they're not causing trouble - lest they turn out to have been needed. So I have left some things that I have no idea about. I did delete Dell Stage - bc. it's a real pain - gets in the way all the time (my daughter who's had this on her laptop for 2 years confirmed that it's just in the way). I did all the microsoft updates, ran a few antivirus, got rid of what I want to get rid of, and it's mostly good to go. Here's the trouble that remains: I can't get the printer working. It's a Canon Pixma MX850 - on the home network. I did not want to install the Canon disk bc. it has a ton of it's own bloatware. So I went to Canon and downloaded the driver - as well as the IJ utility software (I think that helps the computer find a printer on the network). Went to devices and printers, added the printer and made it the default printer. It shows up in printers and devices, but when I go to print something, it fails. Troubleshooting says the test page didn't print bc. something else is in the queue. But there is nothing else in the queue. I opened the queue from my pain desktop (that's connected to the printer) - and there's no documents in the queue. Went to the printer queue on DH's lapto; - it also shows nothing in the queue. I can print from other computers. Don't know what else to do. And I just remembered that I did not see Java. It didnt come up as needing updating when I ran the Secunia scan. I am not sure which programs need it, but can imagine my husband being stumped if he tries to do something that needs Java and asks him to install. I'd like to install it for him. Got to remember that. I also have a question about Microsoft Security Essentials. Twice now it found something bad - and I selected to remove the couple of files. Does this AV just run in the background or do I also need to run scans? Thank you. Lynn.

BOUNCE

Nothing substantial. 64-bit software runs faster ... but the difference is measured in micro- and nanoseconds so isn't of much consequence except in VERY high-performance environments. The typical user browsing email or web sites takes MUCH more time clicking on links and reading text and waiting for data to come in over the network connection than the difference a 64-bit browser can garner. 32-bit software can't make use of more than 4GB of RAM (which includes 32-bit Windows OS) no matter how much is installed in the computer. 64-bit OS and software can utilize MUCH more system RAM ... but if a given computer has only 4 GB then that's all it has anyway. However, many 64-bit systems nowadays may have (should have to get any benefit from a 64-bit OS) 8 GB of RAM or more.