Andrew,

I want to start with, i don't get involved in any web based development or database issues, the last database i worked with was AS400... As that is the case, i dont want to give you wrong information, but i did speak to my friend.. And this is What is Noted as an issue right now..

(IE8 will not work correctly with Expression 2, you will get pages that state to be compatible but you will see header information and missing links in published pages, this is NOTED by microsoft and they are working on a solution to the issue, The issue has been fixed with Expression Version 3, in publishing, but has not been fixed in IE8 yet... This was Noted as an issue with Windows 7 as IE8 is native to it Microsoft says if you are not running Windows 7 you should downgrade to IE7 till the issue is resolved)

I would try to view your published pages with IE7 or with Firefox to see if you still have the issue...

I dont know if this helps, but my buddy told me that their are to many possibilities to cause your issue, but he said the most recent has to do with Windows 7, or IE8, and i am uncertain as to what you are running, but figured if you are using IE8 you may want to start their to see if you are really having your publishing issue, or if you think you are because of IE8.

As for your other issue, he said that it is possible you are having these issues due to IE8 and how it ties into the OS..

If you are running Windows 7, you may want to contact Microsoft directly as they may be able to provide you with a clean install disk without the IE pre installed, then you can run IE7.

Def dont shell out that much for a test machine..
Go to www.microcenter.com they have used AMD based machines, and usually for a sub 200.00 price.. thats where i got mine... although im fairly possitive at this point you can ebay a new Athalon 64 and buy a new board for less then 200 bucks anyway...
Just a thought..
If you are looking new, you can get a Turion 64 for about 500 bucks in a toshiba laptop with 2gb of ram.. just toss the Vista crap out, and through on 2k8 server and 2k7 exchange..
I really dont know how well it will run, but hell my athalon 64 runs good, so how bad could it be? Toshiba laptops are great, but their LCD's seem to crap out prematurely, they don't die, they fade.. and they have cooling issues, which will light your nuts on fire, but aside from that, they really use some high end hardware... Board is MSI, Memory is Kingston, HD is western digital, LCD is Toshiba... which if anything tells you, you may wanna stay clear of their LCD TV's, odd thing is the processors in their laptops are the same as the Desktops processor, and have huge heatsink and cooling fans.. (flat and wide) They are the only ones i have seen like that.. which may be the reason for the LCD death, heat ya know?

Option 1.
With dell, get the service tag, call dell, ask to purchase a replacement recovery disk, they will charge you (don't quote me on this) 25 bucks for the disks and the shipping.. The machine would need to be licensed for windows XP in order to get this... as 2k is no longer supported..

Option 2.
Find a friend who has a netbook, take their XP home disk and reinstall the OS using the key stamped on your dell desktop, Find a friend with an HP or Dell machine who has the Windows XP pro install disk, and reinstall the OS with the key stamped on your dell desktop.
Download the NIC drivers from dells website, install them on the desktop, then just run a custom update from windows website to install all the other drivers and windows updates..
(NOTE: if the key fails you may have to call microsoft, make sure to just tell them you reformatted, if they ask you got a virus, DO NOT MENTION you used software borrowed from a friend)


Andrew,
Definitely correct, Dell, Hp, Gateway all did that partition crap..
(Also, no gruff on the installing drivers from Microsoft's website, I know all about that, but for the sake of ease.. well ya know?)

Make sure you do not have to have a specific boot disk for the dell, a lot of dells are picky with the disk they boot. In addition if you swap out parts, specifically in a lot of laptops, the system recognizes a change and may not take the new hardware that was changed such as a switched hard drive, or anything of that nature. There is ways around stuff like that, you must use a master disk as mentioned above, even if you are missing drivers, you can get them off the internet once you get into windows.

So what do you think?

Al Gore gonna man-up at Copenhagen...?

or will he tail-tuck and run to momma?

IBM,(lenovo) did make solid machines... Their laptops have had issues with the power connector, (dubbed the name stinkpad) however since they have become Chinese they have terrible support... I would definitely stand clear of them at this point... (aside from their servers, which retain the US support on tier 2 or higher)

Exchange supports the old skool AMD64 processors.. Just to save you some money, you may want to just buy a used AMD64 athalon machine..
You can get them pretty cheap, Im running one now with a 2k7 exchange setup.. (paid 150.00 for it, and 100.00 for an additional 2gb of memory)
Just dont go IA-64 as exchange wont run on them..

Well, recently Dell was taken back over by the Dell family and has shifted main support back to the US... Now whether or not their employees are heavy Indian or not.. They are in the US, in TX.

I just wont buy HP anymore because a company during the Recession that shifts 24k+ jobs to other countries, not to mention right before the holidays putting all of those people out of work doesn't sound like a company i would want to spend money on...

You got that right. Not just the rich. Everyone is real quick to send others to sacrifice, but talk draft and suddenly it's not such a good idea.

I call them gravy-train riders.
They are willing to enjoy the benefits of being American. Benefits won by blood.
But unwilling to give anything back.
They are quite content to ride along free their entire life.

Id go with dell since HP has laid off 24,600 US employee's last week, and honestly i will be boycotting them for that...

Ultimately all your machines, dell, sony, gateway, hp, compaq, whatever all use the same internals...

Really what you want is to go for cost, Acer is generally cheap, but if something breaks, i am not sure what kind of support you will get..
Dell has Decent support and i am typing this on a dell laptop that i have owned for over 10 years without an issue, and yes the original Battery still works, and lasts about 4 hours... (Can explain battery maintenance if needed to help yours last forever too)

Our country is divided

"A house divided against itself cannot stand"

Our country is on a road to self destruction

Actually I have already posted the exact answers to your question and have specifically pointed you to the correct source of information. If you don't have time to read it, you are just taking a position from a position of ignorance. The science is clear how a global warming trend can cause localized cooling while the average temperature of the Earth goes up. It can (and has) caused localized short ice ages over much of North America and Europe. This effect is caused by redistribution of the Earth's heat by the oceans.

On a much quicker and localized basis, the warmer oceans create warm moist air which rises creating large low pressure areas. Cold (high pressure) air spills in from the poles to fill the void i.e., low pressure. The more low pressure the more movement of arctic and antarctic air which results in localized cooling ... for awhile. There are no straight lines in weather records. The temps spike up and down with trends that go up or down.

The problems with global climate change are not the crap that get sensationalized. The problems have to do with "tipping points" which are events caused by global warming that increase global warming. These tipping points cause rapid changes that the animals on the planet can't cope with because the change is happening too quickly, people included. There is a good chance much of the grain growing areas of North America and Europe are going to be drastically reduced in productivity for several years, at least. The economics of world hunger are going to come into play.

Animals cannot migrate anymore because the wild ones only exist in preserves surrounded by man. When areas of grassland turn to desert (as they are doing now), but more rapidly, the animals are going to die. We are killing the rainforests.

Global warming is not about freezing to death or needing more air conditioning. It is about geopolitics of hunger and mass extinction of most of the animal and plant species on Earth.

Almost EVERYONE who is scientifically qualified to understand the actual data on global warming agrees that most of the warming is due to CO2 produced by man. Most are now realizing that the warming is occurring faster than predicted and most are realizing that new tipping points are being found that are making matters worse.

New Zealand has been experiencing some of the most dramatic warming of any area. The nearby icecaps are melting. Any news report of the data stating that New Zealand actually has no warming trend and the data was falsified doesn't have a clue. I've been there.

"I warned of this while it was happening. Couple this on top of Bush's unwillingness to plan for an exit strategy has made the removal of US forces complicated and difficult to say the least. "

Misdirection.

Exit from war zone is allways complicated by the very nature of war.

Exit strategy from Iraq was in place BEFORE Obama took office so giving him credit for it is balderdash.

What I will never understand is how anyone can give a Nobel Peace prize to the leader of a country that IS AT WAR.

Such a thing is an aberation in my opinion... A gross and sickening aberation.

So strange as it may sound, Avast considered Spybot components a trojan earlier tonight on both my computers. I let Avast do it's thing and purge Spybot and I manually took out what was left after the scan. I'm going to reinstall Spybot on both systems and go from there. As of right now I haven't had problems after reinstallation. Could this be just a simple conflict or a rarity of sorts?