I am wanting to change my Dell laptop with 2mb memory for something with 4mb.
An Acer 5732Z looks about right for my needs. Does anyone have any thoughts about the Acer?

One issue I have with the Dell is that I cannot run MS Access from MS Office Pro 97, (yes it's old but why update when the old one does what's needed?). This seems to be due to there not being enough memory to run it.

Also, will an ancient version of Office run under Win7?

Many thanks

CCC
am running office 97 pro on Win 7 - no probs.
Where there is a prob with an old application, certainly Micro, possibly others 7 sometimes offers to search for a tweak

CCC

The only Acer that I have experience of is the Aprire notebook which is cheap and cheerful and I'm very pleased with it.

I am surprised that any hardware problem is stopping Access running, and it will certainly not be because of not enough memory - 2GB was unheard of in 1997.

I have installed Officce 2000 on a Win 7 system with no problems but if '97 does have problems, you could always use XP mode which should resolve ithem. To do this, you need to have Win 7 Business or Ultimate (in any case it's not worth getting anything else) and have a proccessor that supports virtualisation.

Also, if you are going for 4GB RAM, you must use a 64bit OS to take advantage of it. This could have problems with old software.

Instead of buying a new laptop, why not download Microsoft Virtual PC and install a clean virtual XP system. Access may work on that.

Windows 7 Professional has XP Mode that should run most old software without problems. Its basically a full copy of XP that runs under Windows 7.

Thanks for the replies folks. The video takes some of the 2gb RAM on the Dell. On my desktop I used to have 2gb but there is a separate video card, and Access had no problems there.

Another aspect is that I'll use a new laptop to replace my desktop which I've had a few years now

The Acer comes with Win 7 Home Premium, which according to the blurb is 64bit.

I'll have a look in to the Virtual PC route.

Thanks again

CCC

Don't think about a laptop without Win 7 Business or Ultimate.

You need that for both XP Mode and Bitlocker.

Thanks Optimist - any idea what the likely extra cost for the upgrade to Ultimate might be on a new laptop?

CCC

The OEM version retails at around 150. I recently bought a machine from Dell and the upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate was 85.

You used to be able to buy the Ultimate leys on Ebay for under 20 but of course there is the risk that they may stop working.

Can you install programs on a removable disc and then use them on pc, or does each program need to write something to the pc memory.

Jeff

Most Windows programs require installing to the PC hard disk and although you could install to a removable drive, they will still require some bits on the C Drive so you won't be able to use the drive on another machine.

Some programs are designed to be portable and will run entirely from a USB drive. One of the best free sources is PortableApps.com, but there are others.

As I thought Opto.
Cheers

I do disapprove of being forced to choose a browser by the European courts. I used to use Firefox and others occasionally. I have now reverted to just Internet Explorer in protest. When will Macs be forced to do the same thing instead of getting Safari preloaded.

On the off-chance, are there any PHP whizzes here?

I'm really struggling with a script and wonder if somebody can pinpoint where I'm going wrong. I suspect it's in the filepath (it dies when the debug isn't commented out), but I'm also not sure about those headers as it only wants to download the first 512 bytes when I bypass the debug.

< ?php
// Don't timeout when downloading large files
@ignore_user_abort();
@set_time_limit(0);

$filename = "myfile.exe";

send_download($filename );

// -- function

function send_download($filename){
$file_path = 'http://www.example.com/my/path/' . $filename;
$file_size=@filesize($file_path);

// -- let's try to debug
// if(!file_exists($file_path)) { die("File wasnt set or it didnt exist"); }

header("Content-Type: application/x-msdownload");
// header("Content-type: application/force-download");
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=$filename");
header("Content-Length: $file_size");

header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Accept-Ranges: bytes");

readfile($file_path);
exit;
}

?>

I need to print a number of docs on header paper and was wondering what uses the least ink.

To print directly onto the headed paper
or
To photocopy onto the headed paper

or is it the same?

If you are talking about using your printer as a copier/printer it won't print the docs as text and be that crisp. It will print it as a picture image. You might be better printing one copy onto a letterhead and then photocopying at a shop, but that method might depend on whether you have a coloured heading.

Yes the heading is coloured and I just had 1000 letterheads printed.

There is another solution. It is something I have done. I printed the document on plain paper and took my letterhead to a print shop or anywhere that has a photocopier. Then put your letterhead in the copier and copy the document onto your paper. A print shop would probably be cheaper.

Thks for the responses H

Messenger Live Help

I can't see some of my contacts, when I know they are online and they can't see me either, even thou am online

Searched the net and it suggests I uninstall Messenger Live Essentials, but windows won't let me do it, how do I uninstall this so I can re-install Messenger Live to try and get my contacts up and running

Did somebody say something :-0