Monarchs are Beautiful Butterflys flies dang

[Ace]

Well, I am connected.

Just headed home for break and did the dial up set-up and install of Earthlink. Thing actually took, sensibly.  I gotta reload my Favorites and figure the security settings for IE6, but so far working fine and looks nice.  Plugged the phone jack in the wrong plug (one indicated...) so that was scary but figured to try the next one and things started ringing...

Ace; I shall now take a breath. :-X

[poast78]

Let me know what you think of Earthlink. It sounds nice.

[Joanie]

Hi poast78,

I can tell you a little bit about Earthlink from the West Coast. Their regular  Dial-Up has been great, always available and up and running but the DSL for me has been the worst. I don't know who to blame for that Verizon or Earthlink. This last week Verizon has updated their servers and my DSL has been flawless and I hope it continues because I have been fighting with Earthlink since last November about not having my DSL available and they have chagred me for using the regular dial-up when the available hours ran out. With DSL Earthlink gives you 20 free hours a month for regular dialup.

Joanie

[scuzzy]

I'm using Sprint Wireless Broadband, with Earthlink as the ISP provider. For the most part, I'm quite happy with my setup. It hasn't been perfect, but it has been infinitely better than a dial up connection.

[poast78]

I live in the boondocks so dial up is what I'll be stuck with. We still have a year on Compuserve and are already looking for alternatives. Earthlink looks very nice. Thanks for the info.

[Carol]

Hi poast78,
I don't really know anything about Earthlink, but my Dad is using Surfbest.  12.50 a month for unlimited service.  If I ever have to go back to dial-up this will definitely be what I will use.  He has been using it for about two years and is very pleased with it.
 http://surfbest.net/
Carol

[Ace]

Oh, I've had Earthlink since linking.  Works dependably, never get booted off, connects regularly now that I've got the newest local number (had to call, after our area code changed, since it lost it on the ones I'd loaded back when).  The ones they provided are strange; and only one for this city (which is bizarre).  One I got by phone is local, makes more sense, but doesn't show on their "update".  

Also, no AOL page junk popping in and out constantly.  With Sprint, it was a bit of a discount (which went up a couple bucks after) but still pretty cheap, comparatively.  Seems like things move pretty fast, with the new one.. don't know if the USSR Modem is really a boon, or it's just normally ok.  

Ace; he's linked, to Earth.

[poast78]

Ace? Linked to Earth?  :o

Thanks for the info Ace and Carol. It will still be awhile, but it's nice to get a head start on these things. It will probably change by then though...

[pat]

Yep, Ace is linked to earth with chain link earrings. They were Shirley?s.

Poast 78, also check into some of the non-national service providers that may be available in your area. I also live in an area that offers no broadband service. There is also not one of the big national Internet service providers that offer a local access number to their service. I have had good results with one of the smaller ISPs in the area.

Broadband, who needs it?
If you want to take dial-up away from me you would have to pry it out of my cold dead hands.  ;)

[Ace]

I fixed another dang thing, dangit.  

Well, besides learning to read my A-B-8-C's....  

Dang new speed demon kept rebooting on shutdown, instead of shutting up. Down.  Originally, it'd die down startingly fast and completely.  Then, go figure, would resurrect itself.  So's I did a search on "Windows XP restarts instead of shutting down" and I get into this conversation, where one says XP is designed to restart when it senses something amiss, rather than laying out the blue screen of death.  Advised to go in and change that auto response.

So's I did.  And guess what: I get this blue screen of it not liking some driver setting.

So's I think; dang.  This started pretty soon after it worked fine.. what the heck.  Guessed it was after I did the Logitech mouse, late night first night.  Today I did the Logitech navigator keyboard, where I intentionally bypassed the mouseware install figuring I'm good to go with that.

Oh foolish moi.  I went in and tried the mouse (only) install, but it got some server glitch. So I uninstalled the (old) mouseware.  Then installed the new.  Lo and behold; it shuts up. Down. Right away.

I have never seen a pc boot up so fast; literally, you can't read the script since it's moving so dang quick.  Now, it goes snooze justassoon.  

I've got to the Microsoft Works install, and the WP, and the leave off the dang 3rd party cookies option.  About to move to games and important stuff.  About a whole 3 gigs something in place, outta 60.

Hey, too, to Scuzzy et al:  I get this PC World freebie CD which advertises Partition Magic... Ran it.  That's what it is; an advertisement/tour for Partition Magic.  NOT partition magic (gee, I figured they'd kick in a free $70 software with the mag price..).  So I guess that not all that glitters is Gary.

Ace; nice keyboard.  I type pretty fast, too, but not better. I mean keyboard.

[Karen]

Glad to hear the Monarch is flying straight and true.

You'll love XP.  Takes a little getting used to, but overall it's very user friendly.  I've had it now for a little over a month and not a single crash, freeze, or lock up.  It's stability can't be beat, and I find it much faster than Win98SE.

[Ace]

Ok, here's a really technical techie question that will challenge and likely stump the collected technical minds collected, here.  So I'll just go ahead and poast it right here, since I'm too lazy to walk down to the software room.

How the heck do you get the appearance settings to save in XP?

Criminy, one of the joys in my life is tweaking the color combinations and fonts on my computer.  There's no "save" function to rename or lock any of the color combos.  I tweaked XP ones, I played with Standard ones, they'll hold until I go back in and then once I leave them they resort back to the lame colourless defaults.  I set up a new theme, but that hasn't made a difference neither as those revert back, as well.  

How? How Come?  Pooh.

Ace; dang company's afraid I'm gonna show up it's dang monochrome color blind stupid desktop displays.  And I would. >:(

[pat]

Did you click the apply button?  ::)

Also under desktop properties, Themes, there should be a save as button to save your creations.

[Ace]

Well, the "Apply" button will show it, but not save it...  Saying "Ok" will apply the latest.  But coming back, and changing it, loses the setting that was created.  They revert back to the original, default.

There's a Theme "save as" button, but no Save button for any of the specific color schemes.  In 98, and 95, it allows you to name or rename any to your own call.

Guess I'll just tweak them on occasion, then go with it, then start fresh or keep with the one I did.

Ace; there goes my tech specialty expertise.  :-\

[pat]

Hmm??..
I made a lot of changes and so far they have all been remembered.
If you haven?t already, open Windows help and right on the front page there is a link to customizing the desktop. Perhaps that can give some assistance.

[Ace]

This is like a scavenger hunt, but I'm not picking up anything on the list yet...  

Hey; this would be a funny thing to do to kids at a party... send them off on a scavenger hunt and have the first things on the list be:
Crow
Raccoon
Homeless Person

Otherwise; HELP points out how to get to themes and colors and screen savers but just how to apply with no hint you can save them if you ever leave them.  I guess Microsoft copyrighted the colors.  Pretty soon they'll rule the universe.

Or just own it.  

Ace; you can trick co-workers by changing their color schemes to all white or black... they'll wonder why the monitor broke..