I served as President of the Huntsville PC Users Group from 2004 thru 2007.   I have served as president of several hobby organizations.   The HPCUG was the least demanding of all due to the fact that they have a very strong core of responsible hard  working members.   Click here to access the HPCUG WebPages.

My home computer system consist of 2 home made AMD based desk top PC running XP pro, one Acer laptop running Windows 7 and a sometimes working HP Pavilion notebook running ME.    The Acer came with Vista which I have nothing good to say about.    It came with no software loaded.    When I attempted to install Vista, I got a note to call Microsoft and a number that worked.    They asked for the product code that is on the bottom of the computer.    They gave me another code to replace it.    That worked fine until I had an occasion where I needed to reload Vista.    I had misplaced the new product code and of course the one that came with the computer no longer worked.    I had no choice at that point but to buy Vista or load one of my extra copies of XP.

I have since been told that the problem with the product code number was related to some manufacturers using more copies than they were paying Microsoft for.     I suppose issuing a new number kept Microsoft records straight but is was a problem for me the user.

All computers are networked using a Netgear WGR614 wireless Router.  

The Acer is used primarily for PowerPoint presentations.    One of the towers is relative new and is used to run my ham radio station.    I loaded XPpro on it because it runs most all of my ham radio software much better than does Vista or Windows 7.    I basically use the computer sound cards for DSP processing.

The HP Pavilion Lap Top was a good machine until I let it get too hot and after that it was flakey.   I have given thought to trying to locate a used replacement processor and see if that might get it back on line.    It is pretty old and not worth much of an investment.    It would be nice to have it available because most of my ham radio programs work well on slow computers and do they not require a ton of memory.

I purchased the HP from Circuit City.    It is clear to me why they went out of business.    Their service was really bad.

More later!

Last updated 6/26/10 brf