Buying a new PC - advice please.

[wood.mjm]

You won't need to Jill, 'Works' is included in Vista Premium.

Woody.

[falcybe]

Hi, I bought a new pc in August, with Vista business. No MS Works but my brother in law has vista (perhaps premium?) and he has "works" so as long as you get Woody's version you should be all right 

Quite a few programmes I had which worked on ME (2 pc's ago) or XP (last pc) don't and will never work with Vista.

A printer my sister gave me when updating to Vista because it would not work for her, suddenly started working on my pc when I accidently plugged it in to the new pc instead of my old one. Obviously Vista decided to trot off and find an newly created driver. 

With Vista I have Windows Mail, which replaces Outlook express. I think I could buy an Outlook which would work with Vista. However although there is a programme included with Vista for translating old mails from Outlook or Outlook express format to Windows mail format, it didn't work on my pc. Rather than complaining to the shop, I just sent all my old mails I wanted to keep to myself. (As you can guess, I kept my old pc until everything was working on the new one) An alternative would be to open up a (free) account with, say, Yahoo which is quite excellent on reliability, quantity and size, and send everything there.

Open office programmes work just like MS ones, word, excel, access, powerpoint, etc. so you can create whatever you want, free of charge.

However I wanted to keep up to date with MS for work reasons and I purchased Office Home and Student 2007 with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. It is a tremendous learning curve getting to grips with the new way of doing things but I'm starting to love the new ways and wouldn't want to go back to the old.

And I bought an optic mouse, with wire. No clogging and no batteries 

cheers, falcybe

[JAP]

I cannot type on a laptop keyboard,  they are horrible for a proper typist to work on.  ... 

If by "a proper typist" you mean someone who uses 10 fingers and doesn't look at the keyboard, then I qualify for the description 

We all have different opinions so I'll proffer mine.  I happily use a laptop all the time!  I use the laptop keyboard and find it very comfortable.  I usually have a mouse attached and use it from time to time - but that's no different from the situation with a desktop ...

I recently had to replace the desktop and laptop.  This was after about a year of mainly using just the laptop - I unhesitatingly decided just to get a new laptop and forget about replacing the desktop.

Regards,

JAP
PS: It came with Vista.  Computer boffin son has installed XP.

[Nick29]

Wireless mice are a pain in the proverbial - I had a Microsoft one, and it was forever losing connection with its base unit, which was all of two feet away !  And you will also have batteries to replace every 6 months/year.  For the sake of one extra wire dragging across the desk, it's not worth it.  Stick to a wired optical one - proven reliable technology ! 

[Necromancer]

.... or get a proper wireless one from Logitech   

[Nick29]

.... or get a proper wireless one from Logitech   

To be honest, I've never seen the point of a wireless mouse.  "Wireless" is just fine for things like TV remote controls, because I'll probably be sitting at least 5 feet from the TV, but when I'm using the PC, I'm never sitting more than 2 feet from it !  A wireless connection to replace 2 feet of wire ?   Why ?   I got the wireless mouse (and keyboard) for one of my office PC's, thinking that I could use them both from a nearby desk, but they were more trouble than they were worth.

[Necromancer]

more than 2 feet if your PC sits on the floor - and anyway, its one less cable across the desk.

[jillruss]

I must say I agree with Nick on this one - but what do I know (very little if you go by this thread!!  ).

Someone bought me a wireless mouse for Christmas a couple of years back, but it just wouldn't work. I'm hoping that , if I go for the PC package I've seen from PC World, which includes a wireless keyboard and mouse, they'll let me adapt it to include wired varieties instead!! If not, I'll give them another whirl and, if I still don't like them, hopefully my old ones will be recycled!!

I'm really getting into this new PC business now. I'm sure there'll be some difficulties - especially in transferring files - but hopefully nothing that can't be sorted! (Famous last words). Got to wait for another payday (or two) first though!!

Jill

[JAP]

Going back a page ...

My mouse isn't a wireless mouse.

Just a boring old plug in mouse.

Works brilliantly.

JAP