Computer stuff

I'm in the process of restoring Windows from a recovery disk on my mother's laptop and I'm all kinds of nervous over it.  My tech skills are mediocre at best and I've never done this.  Nor am I sure I should be doing it.  I wouldn't do it at all, but the laptop has really never been used yet, so it's not like I'm going to lose any data.  I will have to re-do all the hours of windows upgrades however, but I can deal with that as long as the stupid thing works after this.  It was working fine, but when I installed a new 1 gig of RAM in addition to the 512 MB it had already, it refused to recognize both chips together.  I'm really disappointed in Toshiba's tech support.  The people answering are so obviously joe blow's off the street, reacting to whatever they see in a troubleshooting guide.  I got one dumbo who kept insisting that this laptop was only configurable up to 1 gig, when all the other techs and service people I'd talked to, plus the specs list, say it is 2 gig configurable, and they do not have to be in pairs.  I also got a guy who could not help me get the cover off the RAM memory slot, saying I had to take it into a repair facility.  All I needed to know was yes, it is okay to pry the cover off because it has these little tabs on the cover to keep it tight.  So the last gal said I should use the recovery disk if the laptop wasn't recognizing both chips.  I sure hope as hell she was right, otherwise I've screwed it up.  She then went on to tell me that she got the information off the Toshiba website.  It did not inspire me with confidence.

I've also decided to go ahead and make the switch to Vista and buy a new laptop.  I was going to go with a netbook, but then I realized they don't come with a plug for a telephone line for dial-up.  And when we go to the coast I need dialup.  And I don't want to spend the extra dollars on both a portable CD drive and a modem.  And since I've been playing around with my mother's laptop, I see Vista isn't really all that different.  (HAH!  hope I don't have to eat my words on that one)  And I've been told that Windows 7 is going to be like Vista anyway, so eventually, I'll have to learn it unless I go to a macbook or Google's new OS works out.  And if you buy a laptop now, free upgrades to 7 are available, although I'll have to check and make sure there's no time limit as I don't want the kinky untested experimental version.  

*sigh*

Why yes, I am trying to avoid writing as long as possible.  Why do you ask?