I thought it was the actual guy until I saw the actor in another commercial for subway or something.

I hear that on some phones, you can get internet and share it to your computer using bluetooth.

OTOH? A number of the restaurants we serve in out-of-the-way areas with no DSL are using Cellular stick modems hooked onto a router that handles USB input.

That, too is cool.

I'm trying to backup my iTunes files so I can move them to my new laptop. It keeps saying that my brand new DVD-R's are locked and unwritable. I have no clue what to do from here. I have about 28GB of data to move.

Bonnie, I've purchased Toshiba in the past and had good luck, but it's been a few years since I purchased my last PC. For the last 3 or 4 years I've been buying Macs even when I want to run Windows, I just run windows using Boot Camp. I'm much happier with the Apple hardware no matter what OS is running on top of it.

SuziQ, 500GB backup drives are approaching cheapness these days -- certainly not all that much more expensive than a bunch of DVDs and the time needed to burn 'em. I keep mine in the car in the the car on the theory that if something takes out the house, the car will survive (or vice versa).

I'm with Theo. You can get a great external drive pretty inexpensively. Good, reliable, external drives.

That said, are you sure your computer can read/write DVD-R and not DVD+R?

I purchased a spindle of blank DVDs from Amazon, and only about 50% seem okay to burn.

What is the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R?

Even if I had an external drive, the back-up process doesn't let me pick where to put the files, it automatically picks my DVD drive.

Suzi,

You should just copy the files (from the Itunes directory on your computer) and not use the Itunes process. That's what I did when I moved computers.

There are a lot of new-ish netbooks out there now, which are pretty stripped down, and most importantly INEXPENSIVE. Howver, it sounds like she wants a bigger screen because of vision issues, right?

Theodosia, I think the bigger screen thing is mostly for the luxury of it. She seems to have pretty good eyesight...perhaps even better than mine!

I kept trying to get her to buy a $400 refurbed Toshiba that looked great to me, but she kept wandering over to the 1K machines that are roughly 3 to 4 times what she really needs.

ND, I like the Toshiba's too and, believe me, I pushed hard on the Apple issue. I can't imagine why she is entrenched when ease of use would be so much higher with a Mac.

I'll look for a Toshiba model to contrast with the Dell and let her decide.

My only laptop experience in Toshiba and it has worked well. I'd make sure to get Windows 7 on it, they've made some nice UI enhancements.