I'm thinking of hitting YouTube ... in my copious spare time. If I could figure out how to get to the internet from the (current paperweight), I could do it from home.

What service do you have on it, Todd? I'm finding User Guides and Quick Starts that are specific to service providers.

I'm on T-Mobile (yes, probably not the best, but I've been with them for a good long while). I think it's going to be a long process ... I did manage to make a phone call; got a text and responded to it; added a contact (since almost all mine were wiped out).

T-mobile has a link to a User Guid that looks actually useful, if that helps at all [link]

If you can't look at that and have something specific in the setup I could look up for you and copy and paste into here, I'd be happy to do that.

Thanks - I'll take a look.

Not that much time before the free upgrade to Windows 10 expires. One thing that makes me leary is how the "background" download disabled my computer for about a week until it was complete. From what I can see that is the main problem. If there is a way to foreground updates on a fixed schedule that would alleviate a lot of my worries. I'm pretty certain I could have downloaded windows 10 in about six hours if it had been done foreground. It was the background task management that sucked.

In fact, even though I have automatic updates enabled. I make a point of doing "catchup" additional updates once a week to make sure I my computer never downloads large files as a background task.

So upgrade to Windows 10? Or delete the download and recover the disk space, stayping with Windows 7 - at least until MS XPs it.

I'm sticking with Win 7. There are just too many things about Win 10 that make me uneasy.

I caved and downloaded Win 10, but I haven't installed it yet and am still running 7, which I would be happy to use forever. Except for the fact that MS isn't supporting it after March, I think, no updates to software or virus protection, and that does scare me. How do you plan to deal with that, DX, or do you think it's not really a problem? I'm not a computer literate person, remember, and I don't know a lot about maintaining software. I've depended on updates as long as I've had Windows.

Let me add that I still use a dumb phone on a very basic phone plan to make phone calls, and the occasional text. Our neighborhood has basic cable provided, so we upgrade cable both for wider tv access and for internet. I opaqued out everything I could on Win 7 because transparent windows confuse me, and I don't swipe anything, layer tabs or windows, or ever touch my laptop screen.

So what would the advantages of 10 be versus 7, in my case?

Beverly, the end of support date for Win 7 is 1/14/2020, so there's still some time left on the meter. What I am hoping is that in that time add-ons and hacks can be developed to negate some of the terrible privacy/Microsoft-control-of-your-computer issues that have turned up.

So what would the advantages of 10 be versus 7, in my case?

I was all ready to make the switch before the aformentioned issues became apparent. Everything I'd read to that point had praised Win 10 as being a better OS. OTOH, for most people, Win 7 is probably good enough, and actually has some options (especially some media options) that Win 10 no longer has.