Beloved Hubby gave me the best gift this morning - stuff I already had ! It was so great - like getting it all new again !

So, anyway. We were finishing up cleaning the laptop for Dearest Son before he came home from a weekend at Granny & Granddad's. It had a new Cars wallpaper image, and Beloved had removed his work and game software, and added some just for Dearest. I'd made a bow from an otherwise useless red satin wrap that went to a Barbie-size Hillary Duff doll, and we had cardstock to use for a To/From tag. Remembered a Finding Nemo PC game that came with the DVD, so I went to get it, and I saw some old software I've had for ages.

I remarked to Beloved that I missed using the "Real Clothes" * Barbie and Ken clothes pattern software I'd bought back in '02. Since it was designed for Win98, I hadn't installed it on our XP machine. And when the XP got fried from a lightning bolt surge via the phone lines - it was protected from power surges ! - we had to buy a Vista PC, it was all that was out there. I didn't want to reinstall it for fear that it'd muck up the operating system, but I mourned for the loss of the patterns.

I mean, suddenly our 2 year old printer was history - not Vista supported ! - so I was kinda nervous about putting anything not made that year on our new computer. While we had nothing but positive experinces with Vista, we'd heard a lot of negative stories about it, so I was unwilling to take any chances, no matter how small !

Hubby, though, isn't as timid as I am. He loaded one of my CD-Rom software programs, pulled up 'Control Panel' from the Start menu, then clicked on Programs. Under 'Programs and Features' was 'Use an older program with this version of Windows'. That led to a simple install wizard that walked me through installs of programs that dated back to Windows95 !

As it turned out, the Real Clothes volumes loaded without the old program wizard, and they work perfectly. Two of my other older programs work now, too ! And I was finally able to donate some Win95 stuff that just didn't work at all. I'll ask the thrift store mgr. if they can sell 'em, if not, I'll dispose of them.

How wonderful is that ? I've been happy all day. I got the patterns back, and it's even better than when I had 'em new, because now I can actually sew ! I was still baby-stepping when I bought the software.

And Dearest Son is thrilled with his 'new' computer. He's been busy bookmarking his favorites and watching his DVDs on it. We had brownies for dessert tonight, and we're winding down the day.

What a fantastic weekend !

*if you're interested in well-fitting, well-crafted patterns for Barbie and Ken that go together and look great the first time, check out Real Clothes at www.perestroika.ca . I'm not employed by Carol or her family, I'm just a happy customer.  Who needs to buy Vol. 3, now that I think about it...

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