Manning,
I totally agree with you that you have to build the right machine. I did fail to mention that before going to a laptop I was using a very nice Sony desktop with XP pro. I can not remember the specs at this time but I did have similar issues as with my laptop. When my laptop did not work as I had hoped I did a lot of research and found that one of the problems was the firewire chip set was wrong. I tried using a card with the correct chip set but it did not help any. My problem is that I never really had the right pc built but the Mac just works. I know that I paid a little more than I should and some of my friends discouraged me from switching for a couple of years but I am finally happy with a computer because it is finally doing what I want it to do and without any flaws.

Steve


Steve