General Clark said this several times already and in his book. This is why I voted for him in the last presidential primary. I think we would be out of Iraq or at least stabilized enough to withdraw if he'd been elected instead of W. General Clark understands military strategy in a political context. Unlike Rumsfeld and his corporate raiders short term profiteers. Please note that when General Clark endorsed Hillary Clinton I decided to support her http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/12725. Joe Biden would also do well I think. Hillary has the sense and the personnel to work with.

I've used Macs for my business from the very beginning 1993.

My very first Mac II purchased in 1987 in Champaign, Illinois for 7k (had to take aloan from the University credit union) is in the basement and it still works... sort of - the floppy disks it used to accept don't load so well anymore. The G3 Desktop that followed it in 1997 I think? is still functioning as an experiment a friend of ours is conducting with networking that I don't really get...but it runs and it runs...Not really a Ford exactly more like my grandpa's old orange International truck to be honest with you strong and steady and for many years. - I just replaced my 6 year old G4 and G3 laptops with the newest MacBook Pro...but the old machines are still functioning and usable for back=up and for friends and family to use or if I need to hire locally to help with a given project (always short term and contract only) The Laptop is for kids to game on when they work for me when I'm travelling. They take care of my animals. They stay here longer if they are allowed to game. The old laptop suits them fine and they don't download trojan horses and spyware onto my husband's windows box if they do go onto porn sites (they are teenage boys after all and I have no intention of monitoring them every minute they are working for me). I have told them that if I catch them or find any crap on my laptop I will inform their parents. (My husband insists he needs something in the Windows set-up he has - bits of this and that from all kinds of different companies - for video games that the Mac doesn't have and he does have to use windows at work - but at least his company told Microsoft to forget Vista) I just have work to do an do not want to make an annual capital layout for my machines. I also do not have time to waste trouble-shooting or dealing with the kind of conflicts and tedious babystepping that Vista especially forces on people. I actually liked NT quite well - it worked. I teach on Windows and I design so that everything I do works with Windows Web browsers but I find I spend a lot less time helping students trouble-shoot technical crap if they are on Macs in the first place.

Your friend's computer was already broken. She needs to get it repaired. Your friend's Ibook needs to be diagnosed by someone who knows Macs or doesn't have their head up their butt about the topic of Mac vs. PC but it is obviously non-functional.

I'm not psychically diagnosing it but, I suspect she's run it without a surge protector and something has been zapped. :) At least the don't open another window thing sounds like what happened to my Mom's first IMac - that she bought on E-bay for $50 bucks because she found a Mac Game she liked at a rummage sale... don't ask I don't remember. She just needed a new power supply and a surge protector (she lives in tornado alley - phones get zapped out there). She persists in buying Macs on E-bay or at http://www.smalldog.com/ so she can game online - she's retired. She has a great deal of fun because she just connects and stays connected and chats with hundreds of other retired gaming lunatics - in many multiple windows. I like http://www.smalldog.com for referring people for refurbed stuff - I've had good luck with peripherals and supplies from them.

Other folks:

Where on earth did this bizarre idea that you can't open new windows in Mac or have multiple desktops come from?

I regularly work on my old and new Macs with five or six applications running, multi-chat (Adium now) up and I teach Web-based courses in a variety of different systems including just on my own ordinary Apache Web site.

Some of you who are confused need to keep in mind that the field is not the tractor. The network is your field...it can be heavy clay or lovely loam... that is If I am on slow free community Wifi things I connect to on the Web do so a lot slower than if I'm on a high speed university network or in my decent semi-rural DSL'ed office. That has nothing to do with the machine on the network.

re. Leopard I saw nothing in it that will be useful for me, so I did not upgrade. If it becomes something I need then I'll buy it.

Try this instead for a real sense of the actual news this morning http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21683231/

I must say it is good to know that once hacks like NotOrbitBoy and Nulla Sallus are bought they stay bought... until the salary runs out? I wonder. But at least we're making you get up early.

Pray for wisdom.