Sorry to hear that buddy :( Hopefully you'll find something soon.

Happy formatting? :D

Sorry to hear that hun :<

Windows 8 is nowhere near as bad as anyone makes it out to be. Unless you know for a fact that there's a documented, specific reason that it's going to screw you over in some way, it's pretty much a tweaked version of 7, running faster with some handy new features and some strange interface decisions here and there. It takes a little going out of your way to learn the new stuff and it might be an hour before you're able to work through the changes and get back on pace, but I've yet to find a real reason to consider 7 superior to 8. Don't limit your options just because you're afraid of the OS. Most people I see bashing it were ready to hate it before the preview build even got in anyone's hands.. and even still most of them haven't bothered to really use it seriously, if at all.

Yeah, we have it at home and coming from XP I've had no issues with it. Just stay in the desktop mode. I can even still run old stuff like RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 fine when I set the compatibility for it.

I haven't run into a single program that won't run on it. One music composition program didn't want to run on the preview version and that's the only thing that didn't work for me. (and I'm pretty sure it supports W8 now) If it didn't run older games, that would be a real problem for me because I use a lot of stuff, both old and new. I even have System Shock 1 working on here, though it's through DOSbox. x3

IRC is always an option regardless of platform :D

You know, I got a decent refurb from Newegg a few weeks ago. Yeah, not perfect, but I'm pleasantly surprised with it. And at the risk of sounding like a spammer, you can even get the extended warranty. Just a suggestion.

(4GB of RAM and an SSD later, it smokes my more powerful desktop.)