Good morning, and a Happy Thanksgiving to all! In-laws from Alabama are visiting this week so we're hosting the dinner. So not much train time today, if any.
I bit the bullet and decided to retire my old Dell optiplex tower. It's served me well over the 8 years I've had it, but it is horrendously SLOW and takes forever to load a web page. But I got a rude awakening when I checked all the local electronics stores, and found that the only trusted-brand machines on the shelves now are those with
Windows 8 installed.
Forget that! I've always had a bad experience whenever I bought a machine with a newly-released version of Windows on it, Microsoft hadn't worked all the bugs out of it yet. On top of that, certain open-source freeware that I use, like XtrkCad & DecoderPro, probably aren't yet available for Win8. So I went online and ordered an HP Pavilion laptop with Windows
7 on it. They all seem to get high ratings (4.5 out of 5) in the reviews, and my son [who's
very picky about computers] has had a Pavilion for 2 years and is quite happy with it.
Bon appetit, keep a good supply of Maalox and Pepto Bismal on hand - you'll probably need it!