Jesse, 1Gb of RAM is the bare minimum for Vista, so the new laptop might still seem "a little poky."

Also, a 15-inch display in in the widescreen format will have less vertical space than your current 15-incher.

Gris, Yahoo!Mail Classic is working fine for me, including the search feature.

Grr.... thanks, dcp. Maybe it's something weird with my network here or something.

So, this Compaq has the 2GB of RAM (and some other stuff?) for $100 more than their list price on the cheap one. How hard/expensive is it to install that myself? I would definitely be down with fixing up a $500 computer to make it into a $700 computer, if that's the main difference.

Jesse, 1Gb of RAM is the bare minimum for Vista, so the new laptop might still seem "a little poky."

Ah, that's what I was worried about.

OK, seriously? [link] That looks pretty easy. Hmmm. Maybe I'll do this. (I hate when I start idly browsing and find something on sale -- I feel like I must get it now!)

Anyone have any tips for scanning from a networked Epson CX7400 (connected to an Airport Express) from a Mac?

I can print just fine, but the scan application won't even open unless I connect the printer directly to my computer. The Epson troubleshooting pages are utter crap.

FWIW, I was never able to solve this issue on our old HP printer, so I'm not terribly optimistic.

The last time I checked (years ago) scanning over a Windows network required special scanning server software (which was expensive). I have no idea if the same applies to a Mac network.

Anyway, let us know if you figure anything out, because I'm about to connect my HP printer/scanner to my Time Capsule....

There is an option in the scanner software settings to select a networked printer, but naturally it can't see one when I tell it to do that.

Jess, are you trying to print through the Airport Express from a Leopard machine?

I had a similar problem trying to install the printer onto S's new laptop. First, I specifically needed to download new 10.5 drivers from the Brother web site (so maybe scanner drivers for print/scanner/fax machines don't play nice with Leopard). It sounds like Epson's site sucks ass, but check their downloads section to see if there's an update or driver just for 10.5.

Now, once I'd done that with S's laptop, I *still* had problems installing the printer -- the laptop just did not want to see the printer over the network, even though the installer gave the option to look for the printer over a network (wireless or otherwise). Eventually, I had to unplug the USB printer cable from the Airport and plug it directly into the laptop for the computer to see the printer and finish installation.

Now that installation is finished, the laptop sees the printer just fine over the Airport.

So, unfortunately, that's all very general advice, not specific to you, but I hope it helps.

Also, what's your specific model of Epson?

Jesse, it's pretty darn easy. We ran into a problem where we had to update the BIOS on the laptop to get it to properly recognize the memory, but the actual opening the case and installing the memory is very easy.