1) thank you. :) This was totally my gift to me this year. I'll be eating a lot of beans and rice and soup as a result but I think it's completely worth it.

2) I'm reassured to see I'm not the only one -- by far -- having these issues. I always worry that I'm too curmudgeonly or that I'm getting too old to adapt to new tech. I don't want to be the modern version of the person afraid to touch a computer lest it explode.

I've been trying to figure out what programs I have with this trial version of Office so that I can try it all out and figure out what I really need when the time comes to spend more money -- and I'll be damned if I can *find* the applications. It's crypto-Office.

I wanted to simplify my life and just purchase a straight forward bundle. Looks as if I'm going to either purchase an Office 2003 off of eBay or I'm going to resort to my pastiche of software: Office 2000 + upgrade for Word 2003 + upgrade for Access. I'll continue using Word for a bit and see if I can get myself used to the program but my first reaction is one of horror.