"Short Wave Sportfising" wrote in message
...
To the local repair guy because I couldn't figure it out.

Turns out the video card was toast and that was causing the problems.

Not the power supply.

Ok - anyway, it came back yesterday - I had XP Home, now I have XP Pro
- can't figure that one out.

But, during the course of the repair, I also lost my mother board, so
the drives were backed up with the subsequent loss of programs, but
the data was ok.

However, for some reason, when I started the beast back up, I found
that I now own something called Open Office.

Anybody know what the hell that is?

Oh, and while I'm on the subject, the new version of Thunderbird
sucks.

Can't they just leave well enough alone?

Are you sure the guy put a "legal" version of WinXP Pro on you're machine?
If he didn't charge you for the new operating system, I'd be very
suspicious.

Just for fun sometime ago I downloaded and installed Open Office and it
seems to work quite well. Probably would suffice for all but the most
"sophisticated" of users.

What kind of machine was it you had repaired? Did it come preinstalled with
MS Office? If it didn't come with reinstall disks, they should be available
from the manufacturer, assuming it's a name brand.