I've followed this closely, on the wife's Ipad. And there's lots of brain power to help you track stuff down.

Back in the lost ages, I had 3 separate contracts to figure out why certain systems did not run. I'm talking large scale Unix installs that ran up to 200k.

Hardware, Software, environment. What a tangled mess. Why did the data base at Kimberly Clark's paper mill take all night to sort a dozen entries. No one knew. Finger pointing.
Why did a large marketer have their computer crash every Monday. A year went by. Turned out it was the generator test day, and the thing was putting out very bad voltage then. Took me 3 days to figure it out.

My son built a computer for gaming. He's 23. Thing was a disaster from Day 1. Neon/flashing lights. It looked like something from Star Trek.

A possible solution would be to find an HP or some other brand name computer, selected by it's score on the tests Peter uses here. Built for a 'Media Computer'.

I quit buying huge hard drives. I have a Z drive now, Mybook thing by the modem/wireless modem. One linux system running cron to copy the photos and documents and music stuff to the Z drive at 2 a.m.

Telling you the truth it's better it was you than I. In my state I'd have had the BIG one by now!

John Conley
Musica est vita