Right now, I think I'm about to throw in the towel when it comes to computers.
This machine only has (had) 1 GB of RAM installed. I have a couple of 1 GB cards, so I figured I would swap out the cards and give myself 2 GB of RAM. I turned the system off, opened it up, and pulled the cards out. Reading the the labeling on the cards, each card was labeled "Kit of 2" 1 GB. I'm thinking, ok, these cards are the same size as the ones I'm putting in. Why bother? So I started to reinstall the original cards.
Once I got them seated, I powered the system up. It wouldn't start. Kept giving me a beep, beep, beep (silence) (HDD starts spinning again) beep, beep, beep. Repeat, ad infinium. GREAT!!!
We called a friend that's a computer geek. He said that odds are, I didn't have the cards fully seated. We tried again and again. Same results. We tried the cards I was going to insert. Same results. DOUBLE GREAT!
I'm thinking that I used to much pressure to seat the cards, and cracked the motherboard. Well, in trying some other things, we did get the system to start up, with only one of the RAM cards installed. I guess I damaged one of the RAM sockets. It's currently running on one of the original cards. We only have 512 MB's of RAM. We're going to take it in to the shop where we bought it, and see what they say. I may be able to use one of the 1 GB cards that I already have, to get it back up to original spec's. I may end up buying a 2 GB card in a few weeks, to get it up to where I want it. Of course, I might just leave it at 1 GB (assuming we can get it to work), and buy a laptop for myself, with MS Works, so I can use that for my recipes and other files.
I also want to install an internal card reader. I've found a couple on tigerdirect. I think I even found the port to plug the cable into the motherboard while I had the case open. I might have PeppA ask them if they have any internal card readers they can install.
Right now, I've just had some really bad luck with computers for the past couple of years. I'm getting real jittery about doing anything with them.