Thanks Phillip,
Just in self-defense I'll fill in the history that preceeded my ask for help ... I'm not quite as stupid as you suggest ... but perhaps alomst as stupid
I currently have a total of 3 laptops and one desk top.
I built the desk top myself years ago. It runs XP and still works fine. It's only problem was fitting it into my briefcase when travelling!
I then bought a Sony Vayo laptop at the local Micro Center store with Vista pre-installed. It is heavy but it does just fit in my briefcase.
I gave it a lot of abuse and eventually it it broke down. I fixed it with duck tape and am using it now, but it takes some special actions to get it started properly. This is computer I am writing with as we speak.
So I bought another Sony Vaio from Amazon, this one with Windows 7. I love the operating system ... it is perfect for me, but sadly, as soon as the warantee expired, so did the 1TB hard drive. I tried to copy as much as I could from it by alternating with puting it into the refrigerator until it was really cold, then quickly trying to copy as much stuff as I could before it got too hot again and quit. At present that computer is esentially dead (although, if I ever have enoug time, I might try to fix it myself.
Sony recently went out of the laptop business. I had used Dell years ago ... and liked it.
So I went to the Dell webside and spent close to an hour talking with a nice sales lady. I wanted a machine with as much power as possible but rinning Windows 7. They had a few reasonably powerful computers running 7, but all their really powerful computers came with Windows 8.1, so I bought one (along with a new printer.)
When I first started it up, I was appaled! It was if I had fallen down the rabbit hole along with Alice!
Although I am now retired, I am still reasonably intelligent. I went to MIT and had a long satisfying career in the defense industry. The first computer I used was an IBM 704 ... which filled a whole room.
So ... I said to myself "Self, your smart, you can figure out how to use Windows 8.1.
I was wrong! I admit defeat. I found this web site and liked what I saw, so I signed up. Yours is the first answer I have received. I will call dell later on today and see what they say.
Thanks a lot !!!
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