I can't tell you all how helpful your posts have been. I have a 15 year old spastic quad (cp - birth) and your spirit gives me hope for him.
I thought I would chime in on the Best Buy thing, because we too have come up against the same issue. Here is what I found that works: 1. BB will often knocks 10% off the list price unless the item is on sale - just ask them. 2. Show them an ad from a brick and mortar store on the web for the same item and they will match it...especially true of anything that is carried by Circuit City...doesn't matter if you don't have a circuit city close by. Don't want to start operating system wars - I have a Mac and my oldest son has Vista Professional at college. The Mac is great - and expensive..(no price breaks there - they are like Sony), but I have never had issues about system stability, viruses, firewall, etc and you don't need to buy any additional software to be fully operational. But the buy-in price may make you wince. You do need to consider if you need specialized software like Dragon Naturally speaking, because the Mac has it's own voice control and I think Dragon is PC only. Son likes Vista...works well for him By the way, does anyone know of a speech program that might work with someone with dysarthria?...just can't get my son Graham's voice to register with any of the out of box solutions. Thanks much for your posts. Dave -------------- Original message -------------- From: "Lori Michaelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I don't know how "reasonable" other BEST BUY stores are in other areas or states bt ours is outrageous. My husband went down there to look around today and they are charging 30% more over retail than almost any other place. Even charging much much more than you can get it from Microsoft directly! In a city of now close to one million people... that is really our only computer store. CompUSA closed down a while ago now. There is another one called SWS but it is primarily for those who want to build their own computers, etc.. Something my husband would have been interested in 30 years ago but not now. I think my husband just likes to check in to BEST BUY every six months or so to tell them how it is. Their response? "That's what the price is." Duh... like I didn't already SEE or know that already! LOL I don't know if we are going to update to VISTA or not but Microsoft is doing funny little things to our computer [behind the scenes] that is annoying enough to do so. It's giving them what they want but... but.... but.... Lori Michaelson Age - 44 C4/5 complete quad, 29 years post Tucson, AZ
