EXCELLENT WORK DPR - It's Appreciated.

Well, you can well understand the bit of doing a good job when one does it. It's just that you are at the front-end of that cycle, and I am nearing the back-end. Different views of the same "elephant" (so to speak). For me, it was a jump from my ancient Win98 SE on an older Intel brand system-board system to an ASUS board with Pentium Dual Core 2 GHz with (now, the maximum addressable) 3 GB RAM and 32-bit WinXP Pro SP3 (when they finally patched the pig sufficiently, and summarily discontinued sales). I generated about as many backup images as you report using Acronis TrueImage (used to use GHOST from DOS boots back when it was cool - but the OS-level versions lost some appeal for specific reasons).

System board quality ain't what it used to be. I am a firm believer that the thermal stresses of powering-up and down are the worst. I have kept my system continuously up (with HDs spinning-down after a while) for the last 3 years. Ditto with my HP ZR24w IPS monitor (that has a Mercury Vapor backlight). Once again, it is the thermal stresses of powering-up that causes the anode of the lamp to become plated with Mercury suspended in the vapor.

What I doubled up on was a Full Version of WinXP Pro SP3 - as my present installation is an OEM only (and dies along with my system board, whenever that may come to be). Might have been a bit of a nostalgic move - as BIOS code (like the evermore 64-bit only applications) may not be keeping my lowly 32-bit WinXP in mind when this system board gives out.

Anyway, Firefox 3.6.28 is becoming a dinosaur (like me). It got to a point where Java RTE past Vesrsion 6.33 and Flash past Version 10.3.183.20 (the last of the 10.x releases) simply will not work with Firefox 3.6.28.

The newer Firefoxes mess up displayed images (my video card does not support the level of something or other now fading in my mind). To add insult to injury, the newer Firefoxes refuse to import my years of FF bookmarks (in HTML or the now abandoned JSON database form).

And I really have come to loathe having to mess around with all that crap in general. When this system board finally goes, I really don't have the money, time, or gumption to go through all the rigors again - and I am the type of fellow who insists on doing it all myself the way that I want it.

I popped in an extra GB of RAM (to the maximum approximately 3 GB addressable in a Win 32-bit system) so that DxO 7.23 and RT 4.x would have more RAM margin. I did my bit. I am tired.

In a few years you may sit in my shoes. Older, tired of wrestling (again) with all the complex garbage - and more and more irritated when people (may seemto) dis your old (but lovable) "jalopy" ...