Computer Woes

E and I have 2 computers. A laptop that I got in '04, and desktop that we got in '05. I haven't been using my laptop much lately because it is ungodly slow. It takes forever to boot up. We looked into upgrading it, but it was so touchy to new hardware that nothing we tried worked. So I have been using E's desktop. And that's been working. I just use it during the day and it is available for him to use at night for whatever he wants to use it for.

But when my mother came to visit, we had to share it with her also. And she doesn't have very good computer etiquette. Since her visit it has been acting very odd. The keyboard doesn't seem to register all of my keystrokes and it has been getting increasingly slower. This morning I went through the add/remove program wizard to see what old programs were in there and I deleted almost 1MB of things that she put on it while she was here.

Then I went online to check my email, then opened another window... and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened. I couldn't even bring up the task manager. So, I had no choice but to restart the computer. And the same thing happened again. So, I had to get onto the laptop and email E and tell him I was afraid that his computer had died.

I haven't tried to run it since, but I am going to. If we have to wipe it, we need to try to get several things off first.

I don't think that we will have to replace the desktop, but we do want to replace the laptop. But, not necessarily with another laptop. So if you were going to get a new computer what would you want? What brand? Anyone use Vista and how do you like it?