Ugh. I just started looking at the HP page and I'm scared off PC shopping for the next little while.

Thinking in terms of expansion, though--is there as much demand for cases that can accomodate large cards? If you get the right video card in the first time round, in-case expansion items are RAM, HD, and optical disks. What am I missing?

Memory card readers?

Which I tend to just leave in my cameras, so desktop memory card readers are of no use to me, but you might be weird and use them....

Oh, um... Bluetooth? WiFi?

Video capture/tuner?

Someone explain this to me:

Windows 2000 on my laptop cannot, for some reason, see audio CDs in my D: drive.

Thus, iTunes cannot see them.

Windows Media Player can. But then I have to go through this pain in the ass process of copying them via Media Player then importing them one-by-one into iTunes which involves converting the songs from WMA to AAC. Which it won't do in bulk. Just one. By. One.

Any ideas for a fix?

Have you looked at the Device Manager to see if the drive shows up? and if there's any errors associated with it?

Also, try holding down the shift key when you insert the disk.

I keep it on 24/7 and the fan seems so noisy these days.

You could just get a new fan.

Not nearly as much fun as a new machine, but a lot cheaper.

Okay, Device Manager should have been my first thought but, lo, I am dumm.

Turns out "digital audio CD" was not enabled for the drive. Click a ticky-box...all problems solved.

*sigh*

You could just get a new fan.

I doubt the fan has gotten much louder--I'm just OCDing on it because I'm jonesing for new stuff.

Are manufacturers putting Bluetooth on their desktops these days? Are there enough wireless keyboards and mice to make it sensible? I'd sure love not taking up a port with one. As for WiFi I think I noticed it as an option before Dell scared me totally away--nice backup so you can steal your neighbour's signal in a pinch.

I think my foray into HDTV TiVo has cured me of wanting TV on my PC for the nonce. At least as far as capturing it myself goes.

I have been living in Device Manager for the last day or so, and I still can't make the computer see a thumb drive. Through a long series of changing, deleting, unplugging and rebooting, I finally managed to make the computer see my backup hard drive, so I'm back up with everything except e-mail and scheduling since September. Outlook's automatic backup? It apparently decided I had changed my mind. Also, did you know there's a maximum size for a .pst file? That's another thing I know now that I didn't know Saturday. Disasters are so enlightening.

Also, I miss my cookies.

DJ, TweakUI has already helped me fix another logon problem. Thanks!