Oooh, hey o_a. Still having the same problems. I have another (older) graphics card I can try. I hope the card isn't bad, as I have several video games that require the card.

I'm going to take another crack at it today and report back.

ok. I'm in tech, so no clue when I'd get them to you. The power supply was used for about 6 months at most. It's pretty beefy. The graphics card is ok. Nothing new. The only fancy thing about it is it also has an S-video output. Don't recall all the other details, but I do still have the box for both! Go figure. Let me know if you want them. They are yours for the taking.

Another person with a Toshiba Satellite, I got it in November and I love it. I have vista and dont' seee the immediate hate...okay the constantly stopping everything to have to click that yes i want to install is annoying, but other than that things are fine.

My brother had a Toshiba or two and liked them, the last one he dropped and cracked the monitor but he kept using it with an external monitor until he switched over to a Mac.

I've got four Toshiba laptops of various vintages (One of them is a tablet) and they've all been nice and reliable.

The Leonovo's are what IBM Thinkpads are now called and they have an excellent reputation as well. Many businesses prefer them.

PM, your recommendations are sound, but that's kind of where my frustration is. I'm used to diving in and using my computer without needing to constantly seek help. I'm not a luddite. I shouldn't have to mess around like this.

Outlook 2007 is so bad that it is unusable when I'm not in safe mode. And I'm not using Outlook to access email (only my calendar and notes).

So the slowness bothers me with some apps. I also hate how the menus changed for Excel and Word 2007. That was a terrible mistake that I wish Microsoft could redo.

New update:

I swapped out my graphics card for the one that came with the computer, and it's working fine. That's a bummer. And I just checked the hardware profile, and the computer automatically detected that I'd switched cards, and loaded the drivers for the right card. It knows there's a GeForce2 MX 400 in there now.

And when I looked at the device manager in safe mode with the other card in, the profile showed the GeForce FX 5200.

So, the computer can tell which card is which. At this point, I think I'll try putting the 5200 back in and see what happens, but the nicer 5200, that I spent good money on, may be fried. Feh.

I bought a Toshiba Satellite Pro 620Cd at a garage sale for $9 once.

It needed a hard drive and a keyboard, but it worked the last time I fired it up.

I may cannibalize it for a video picture frame.

Help!

I just bought a tivo and spent all afternoon on the phone with the tivo folks and it's still not working and I'm frustrated and confused.

It's supposed to be a dual drive tivo but it can't "see" both the analog and the digital cable stations. The tivo people suggested that I call comcast and find out if I have a purely digital lineup. Comcast says no and I think that tivo and comcast may mean different things by "purely digital lineup." For example - I can set it up so that I get analog cable on my tv or I can get it all on digital. The tivo is set up the way they wanted me to get both but it can't "see" the analog. Any hints?

Vista question in regards to scrolling through My Pictures:

I've always hated using the picture viewer that came with my digital camera, or any digital camera for that matter, so I've always sorted through them in C:/Julieanne/My Pictures. But with Vista I don't get mini versions of the photos for the thumbnails. I only get a generic picture. Which means I have to go through the pictures one by one, in chronological order. I searched the settings to see if something was switched off. Am I missing something, or am I just screwed (having to resort to the viewer that came with the camera or stuck with the drudgery I am dealing with now)?

I'm digging through five years of trigger-happy garden pictures, and there's other crap mixed in, and it's taking waaaay too long. And it's for my prospective new boss so he can show off the best pictures to the rest of the staff and make them love me and give me lots of money so I can afford to live in NJ. My future may depend on these photos. /melodramatic

sumi, I can't help you. there are good tivo help forums over on tivo that might be helpful to you.