I love my brand new Hewlett-Packard laptop with Windows 7, and just about have it loaded up with all my stuff. But a word of caution. New laptops have 64-bit operating systems as opposed to 32-bit (which means your computer can process more bits of information at once). That means your gadgets and software might work and they might not, and you won’t know until you try.

Software I’ve had forever that’s a laughable version to the people who use it a lot (such as version 2.0 of Photoshop Elements) works fine. But my business card scanner (that’s older than version 8) and my DYMO postage and label printer will have to be re-bought.

I’m the most distraught about Adobe Acrobat. I have version 7. I can open a PDF and edit it, add more pages, etc. But I can’t create one by printing to the Distiller. I normally use Adobe Acrobat every day and am dreading having to upgrade when I really don’t need anymore features than I was already using.

There are no drivers for any of this, and it didn’t work trying to use them in the compatibility mode Windows offers. It was time for a new laptop, and I’d budgeted for it. But I wasn’t prepared for buying more gadgets and software though, but I guess I will. Good thing to do anyway before year-end (for tax purposes).

PEACE.