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In the “The fast, easy, Reset clean-install method” is there any reason not to choose the option “Keep my files”?

Also, does it really keep all my files including stuff in folders like c:FTM?

In NYC I have Verizon FIOS. 75 mb/sec down & up. I think I am paying around $80 – $100 / month. I am not sure of the true cost because it is bundled with telephone & TV. It is much more expensive and slower than what is available elsewhere in the world. The monthly data limit is uncapped. That is a good thing compared with typical USA and world wide cell phone data plans.

I suspect the article’s analysis is correct. We have slow, expensive internet access in the USA because the conservative “free market” advocates have established private sector monopolies that are designed to maximize big company profits. In NYC we have some competition. In most of the USA there is only a single “high” speed provider and you can’t get anything close to 100 mps speeds at any price. The only private company providing gigabit speeds is Google and they do it only in a very few places on an experimental basis.

Look back to history. Would you accept the idea that the water supply was provided by private companies rather than by municipalities? No one currently is upset that the water supply is paid for by taxes. The idea of multiple water supply infrastructures and duplicate pipe system is just inefficient and expensive.

Supplying household water by private, profit making companies currently seems insane. But, once upon a time that was the accepted mode in the United States. Think about the Manhattan Water Company that was founded in 1799 by Aaron Burr. It turns out that this was a legal scam with a charter that allowed it to rapidly morphed into a bank that challenged the financial monopoly of Hamilton’s Bank of New York.

wavy,
the upgrade to windows 10 from windows 7/8 is free from Microsoft.
ebay is not cheaper than that.

Thanks,
Confirmation on this point is important to me.

I got worried when the “Get Windows 10” icon disappeared after I did the Ultimate upgrade.
It took a while to realize that I had to activate the upgrade to Ultimate.
When I did that, the “Get” icon returned.

In spite of what you said about Outlook and a unified inbox, Outlook 2013 does display a single unified inbox for multiple different email accounts.

Thunderbill,
VueScan 9 may be all that you need.

I am not sure of its quality but VueScan 9 includes ocr.
Download the trial and try it on your documents.

I have considered some of the other password programs but I am concerned about the security of keeping my passwords on some company’s server. I only want those on my own computer.

I had misgiving about Roboform 7 because of their new pricing / subscriptions structue.
I have been using LastPass and been mostly happy. It does seem a little quirky (technical term meaning: I don’t understand why the notification bar is sometimes missing).

They had an intrusion on their servers yesterday and notified their users that they should change their master password that is used to encrypt the stored passwords.
Today, as everyone tries to re-encrypt their saved passwords, their servers became unavailable because of the high load.

There are a few lessons here:
1. use a long & safe master password.
2. It is hard to depend on a 3rd party storage of your passwords.
3. Roboform 7 has an option to save your encrypted passwords to their servers. Same potential problems.
4. I can still access the local copies of my passwords in LastPass today. But, I can’t store new passwords.
5. I suspect that they will be back on line tomorrow and will soon have more robust protection for their servers.
6. The good reason for storing your password libraries (encrypted) in the cloud is when you have a desktop + laptop + smart phone and want passwords to sync automatically. Note: LastPass for PCs is free. LastPass for smart phones adds $12 / year. If they get their act back together, I will probably upgrade for the paid smart phone version.