Now the question of the day: How much did it cost, and how much has it put you under?

More than I should have spent and not much. It wipes out a good chunk of my tax refund but should still leave me enough to make it to AC.

See, that's the thing however, you spent your money in a responsible fashion. Which is more than can be said for many others! Either way though, it's good to treat yourself every once in a while. Especially when it is something you use often!

And, something I did not have for 8 months. But, spending a little extra now should mean it will be that much longer before it needs to be replaced because it cannot run the software I need.

Glad you got things sorted out. Looks like a good system and one that'll last a while :3

Atleast until it becomes obsolete :P

I have at least 6 months until that happens!

Know what it is like to deal with a place staffed by "computer geeks" instead of certified repair personnel. Joe College sells the manager a good story at the end of his semester and gets the job. He gets your computer, tells manager that he knows what computer’s problem is and “has to order parts“. Joe doesn’t know what is wrong but keeps dodging questions from said manager with “parts have not come in yet” until store gets tagged by BBB, but by that time September has rolled around and it’s back to school for Joe and TS to the owners of all those computers said geek “knew what their problem was” that are sitting at the back of the storeroom shelves.

My advice is to have an external hard drive (they are relatively cheap), back up all your I-can’t-loose-these-files files, back up your mail files and e-mail address files regularly, manually write down all your passwords and when repairs on your computer stretch out longer than two weeks (half a MONTH) then go out and buy a new computer install all your old programs and files and go from there. Playing Ring Around the A--Hole Game with computer repair conmen is just not worth it.

Welcome back Stripes.

He doesn't even have that excuse since he runs (ran?) the shop himself.

Thanks for the advice. Fortunately, I had one doing that for the missing machine. All I have to do now is use it to recover my missing files.