[Ham-Computers] Help needed

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

Phil,

OK.  You could be right.  But one further suggestion in that regard.  About 
a year and a half ago I bought a new laptop from Gateway rather than repair 
the broken CD drive in the 8-year old one I had.  By default, it came with 
Vista.  But when I insisted I wouldn't buy it with Vista, they admitted they 
could ship it with XP.  So you might try to find out whether whoever you 
bought the machines from will ship them with XP and if so is there anything 
they know not to work.  When I bought mine, Microsoft hadn't yet defacto 
admitted Vista was trash so it took a threat to go to Dell to get Gateway to do 
what I wanted.  Today I wouldn't expect any trouble like that.

Also, someone just suggested just installing the printers and not bothering 
with the HP application stuff.  That's exactly what I had to do here with 
an older HP printer.  I must have tried over a dozen times to do it the HP 
way.  Worked once.  Then I had to change the system board and I didn't even 
try when I set up with the new one.

In a message dated 4/18/2009 11:51:15 AM Central Daylight Time, 
ko6bb at sbcglobal.net writes: 
> Robert,
> I appreciate the suggestion and like XP, but the problem is, both of those 
> 
> Vista machines are Laptops, both have some "Acer Specific" features that I 
> 
> really like and which are supported with some special access keys.  It is 
> likely that I'd lose those features if I loaded a new OS.
> 

Robert Downs - Houston
wa5cab dot com (Web Store)
MVPA 9480