One of my cousins bought someone a laptop with Vista pre-installed. By the time he got to telling me the story, he had done some terrible things trying to replace it with XP that involved playing with various partition managers.

I had a rather tedious afternoon while he kept coming back to me asking what he should do, and I kept telling him that I didn't know either the starting configuration, or what exactly he'd done to this point. All of which seemed to irritate him more and more. I explained that if I wanted to demonstrate mind-reading skills, I could go to any tech newsgroup and read 1000 complaining posts per hour that were similarly devoid of diagnosable details....

Set up my new desktop Monday (cheap Compaq). Foloowed your steps in the paper - thanks! Very simple, and hooking it up to the home network was MUCH simpler with Vista, but still took about 2 - 3 hours, mostly because of the long times I had to wait for all the updates to download and install.

Hi,
I just finished getting my father-in-law set up with a digital photo frame -- Kodak SV811 Digital Picture Frame. It is very easy to set up. We first ran photos off a SD card -- it even shows videos with sound. Next I had him practice loading photos onto the internal memory from a flash drive -- the menu on the frame is easy to use and the frame has a 128mb internal memory. Only weak point on the frame is its stand -- seems a bit flimsy to me. Now...will he lose the remote?!

I also set up a new iPod nano for a different relative -- so easy. Love that big screen and its video capability. There is a great tutorial for first time iTunes users on the apple home page. Highly recommended:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/tutorials/?sr=hotnews

Spend, spend, spend.... that's probably all we do these days. I gave my family and friends books, yes low tech books, for Christmas this year. Many were disappointed but I wasn't. I also bought myself an Acer laptop from Walmart for less than $400. I was able to set it up in under 30 mins and it works fine. Don't see what the fuss is about Vista; I think it has some very neat features that make it a very good improvement over XP. Matter of fact, I'm so tempted to upgrade my desktop to Vista!

Yeah, good luck upgrading an existing XP desktop to Vista. Hope you have 2GB in that sucker. Did you know that every Vista upgrade package comes with a gun -- that way, after the upgrade goes horribly wrong, you can just stick the gun in your mouth, and end the pain. Dude, if it's not broken . . .

No tech problems in the house after Christmas:

1. I got the bride a Garmin 350 -- no problems, right out of the box.
2. Daughter's iPod nano -- as predicted, right out of the box, works fine.
3. Kids got me a digital picture frame -- Brand X (they're kids), but it appears to work fine.
4. Wife's bluetooth earpiece (BlueAnt) -- works fine with her Treo.

A little patience, read the instructions -- most things do work. Operator Error is always the leading suspect.

fr TMU:

>...A little patience, read the instructions -- most things do work. Operator Error is always the leading suspect.

LOL! I had an instructor in college who was a firm believer in the horrific illness called PEBKAS: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Seat!

Any of you guys who have converted an all-XP home network to mixed XP and Vista without any help from the Geek Squad, please raise your hands!
I thought so. Not a one.

I have a set up question re: Verizon FIOS. I don't want to use Outlook Express as my email client, (Thunderbird has served me well for several years, and makes me less nervous about security), and I'd like set up some subaccounts. What options are available - either on the Verizon webmail or otherwise - for those who do not have Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express?

(Note: submitting emails to Verizon Help and Support gets me an automated response to check the Help and Support, and the telephone tech support referred me to DSL and to telephone repair. This was after the menu asked if I had a question about FIOS, and then asked if I wanted to order it. Well, no, I had already had it ordered and installed, I didn't know if I'd get sales if I said yes, so I asked for "agent"...When I reached humans, they promised to transfer me (internally) to FIOS tech support, but once they left the line, I was left in a black hole. No one answered...)