After months of fussing with Vista, I had a guy out to the house yesterday. He partitioned the drives on my new computer, with Vista on one and XP on the default drive; he re-installed XP and fixed some issues on a second computer so it runs like a brand new machine, then upgraded memory and installed XP on a third machine (a 9-yr. old machine) and it also runs like a dream. To top it off, the guy breathed life into a four-year-old laptop that was struck by lightning three years ago--one that I had assumed would never work again.

He set all of my computers (including a fifth one upstairs) up on the wireless network, fixed a number of technical issues (driver problems mainly) with my wireless printer, and pointed out a potential problem with the way the sewer is run in my basement.

Of all these things, the part that took the most time was his work on the brand-new computer from Dell. Dell did not specify or ship the drivers to make the hardware work with XP, so the guy spent most of the day finding those online. It took ten hours, all told, to do all that he did.

Final charge for all that work? Two hundred dollars.

At last, my struggles appear to be over!

On with the next struggles then, whatever they be.

Herring405