good news

My father writes that his copy of Photoshop Elements 4 is on the way. I checked the system requirements for that program, and it looks as though my poor, battered laptop ought to be able to handle it.

This laptop's come a long way. I've run some disk repair programs on it, somehow managed to debug the startup procedure so that it no longer takes the whole Cretaceous Period for the computer to ready itself, and got the display back to showing millions of colors like any normal 21st-century computer. Along with that, I've got MS Office on here, have downloaded Adobe Reader, and once I have Photoshop, the final piece will be in place and I'll be open for business.

Need a graphic? Let's talk.

[NB: GIMP doesn't seem to have what I want in a graphics program. It's good for photos, but not nearly as intuitive for the design work I'd like to do.]

I'm about to check whether the freeware sound program called Audacity (thanks, Charles) will solve my file-reading woes. The problem, though, is that the laptop doesn't recognize my digital voice recorder, so I can't access the files on it. The device doesn't show up as a "removable storage device" when I look through the My Computer window; it simply doesn't show up at all. Even if Audacity is able to read the files stored on the device, I might still be unable to reach the files, let alone read them. Update on all this coming soon. I'm hoping to be back to transcribing by this evening.

UPDATE: Audacity downloaded and set up just fine, but as I thought, it can't find the device. The laptop won't recognize the device without a driver, and whenever I search for a driver for my recorder, I'm sent to the Olympus site, where the software is available for purchase. The search for proper software continues.

_