Hope you find a monitor you like. I know many people who run 2 monitors with their Surface Pros (3 & 4’s) and a docking station. I run the desktop Adobe Suite plus Photoshop and Lightroom CC off of the original Surface Pro. I may have missed where someone said this, but don’t forget there’s a micro SD card slot where you can store more files. I set mine up so all my program files are on the harddrive and all my files are on the micro SD card. That way when I’m traveling and won’t be doing PowerPoints- Spreadsheets - or working with databases.... I pop the SD card with that information on it and put a blank micro SD card (256 gb) for photos and have plenty of space for travel photos. Then when I get home I swap the Micro SD cards out when the appropriate files are needed. FYI - I know some software developers that travel with an Asus usb monitor. It has s padfolio type case and the surface Pro and monitor all fit nicely into a backpack (with room to spare) for travel.

Purchased the RX100 II when it was new. I take it with my Canon 5D IV on trips. I purchased it the first time I went to Disney with my granddaughter because I didn’t want to take my DSLR. I now refer to it as my ‘Disney’ camera. It has always taken great pictures for me and I’ve had quite a few blown up and put on canvas. I also use it on the beach instead of my DSLR. Hope you like yours!

We have had 3 Morkies (1/2 Maltese 1/2 Yorkie) in our family and Rizzo looks like he came from the same litter. My little Morkie is my test subject for all my lenses😊. Rizzo is a cutie and probably has the personality to match!

Very cute! Is it a Morkie?

Love Golden Retrievers. Yours are beautiful. We had 3 Golden Retrievers. We had two beautiful Goldens and kept one of the boy puppies from the first of two litters(nine puppies in each litter). My dad always said there was nothing prettier than watching the 3 Goldens running through our field with their feathers flying in the wind. Never get tired of looking at Goldens. Thanks for sharing. Wish I still had my Goldens so I could take their picture with my phone!

Lensrental.com

If you try them, hope you like them. Thinking about trying their tabletop canvas that’s on sale. 5x7 for $6.75 or premium $11.25. 8x10 for $9 or premium $13.50. I only purchase them on sale......

There’s been quite a few topics about framing prints lately. I’m not sure if anyone would be interested, but Canvas on Demand (canvasondemand.com) has their canvas prints on sale right now. 20x16 for less than $25 dollars and they have always done a great job for our family. They have other sizes on sale also. That’s what I do for my grandchildren’s pictures in my office, and when they FaceTime me right before I leave the office at night, they always ask me to go around my office so they can see their own pictures! Great product and makes the grandchildren feel important..... plus it doesn’t break the bank!

Check to see if the college is going to have a photographer on stage to take pictures that you can buy. You can always take photos from your seat, but if you can purchase pictures also, it may reduce the stress of taking photos at ‘that moment’ even though you may take a great one! Even though we had two family photographers for our youngest daughter’s MBA graduation and then again at her JD graduation .... we purchased the pictures taken on stage by the photographer that the University hired.

As far as lenses, I agree with the 70-200mm II IS suggestion. It is an incredible lense, especially with your camera in low light. You probably have someplace you can rent one before the graduation so you could feel comfortable with it (or another lense/extender you wanted to try). If you are close to the school, see if you can get into the areas where graduation may be taking place and do a ‘dry run’.

Last but definitely not least, CONGRATULATIONS!

Sorry it took me so long to answer! It’s been a lot of long days nights at work!

I didn’t mean anything derogatory about Hughesnet, I have never tried them. I was referring to what other people were saying about them. When I had WildBlue, the only thing I noticed was some hesitation before a browser would come up. In those days, I never streamed video so I don’t know if that would be a problem.

Don’t give up, once you move there and make friends with the people who have been in your area for awhile, they may have information none of us thought of or knew about in your local area.

I’m happy for you - living with some land around you will be great!

Absolutely beautiful!

I have a couple of suggestions for you which may or may not help. I feel your pain since we work in a city with high speed internet and our 'family home' is rural. We don't use as much internet at our 'family home' so we have a Verizon 4G Broadband Router with Voice (unlimited use) which is stronger than the two mifi's that we carry with us all the time. It has unlimited data, but is 4g until we use 10gigs then it downgrades to 3g - but unlimited. Believe it or not - we can still stream our TV at 3g - but the resolution is not as good at 4g (which is excellent). But since you said you can't get a very good cell signal - that may not be an option. I would also like to suggest that you look at all cell companies and see if there is another cell phone company which has a stronger signal. Where our 'family home' is, Verizon had a stronger signal than ATT - thus we use Verizon.

Second suggestion is to look at other satellite offerings besides Hughes Net. I'm not saying rule them out - just look at other options. When our children were growing up, we had an internet satellite called Wild Blue which was very good. We quit using it when we remodeled the house for 14 months and weren't using the service very much (not because we didn't like it). My understanding is that they have been purchased and I am not sure how their service is after being purchased, but you may want to investigate. This is their website: https://www.viasat.com/wildblue

Third, call your local utility company and see if they are going to start providing internet to your rural area. Our rural home's utility company has been investigating putting internet in and will probably have it's customer base finished in 5 years. As they told me, many utility companies are doing this because the internet is like the home phone used to be.... when the internet goes out everyone is calling trying to find out when it will be back up. Now they said, when the home phone goes down, no one calls.

Lastly, I would like to ask that if you find a great solution - please share what you discovered! I read your post to my husband and he said "welcome to our world"!

Sorry you are having problems with your Asus. This response may not apply to your problem and may seem a little 'random', but may help someone.

I have two of the Asus G75 models and love both of them. My first one I purchased 5.5 years ago and it's still running strong, the other one was less than a year old when my problem started. Last fall I started to have a problem with the on/off button on both of the Asus G75 laptops. I wasn't sure if the laptops would come on or not or just start to come on and I may see a white mouse arrow - a white circle going round and round or maybe nothing. I could usually get them to come on after quite a few tries but didn't really understand what could be causing the laptops to do this. I researched and read many articles (many said to do something to the BIOS but that was my last resort), so the article I saw about my issue and thought I'd try first because it was probably the least to cause problems, was to update the Intel Chip. I don't recall ever having to manually update the Intel Chip's software in any computer I've ever had....... BUT as crazy as it may sound - it worked! For the last 5 months everything is working as it should on both laptops.

My Asus that is 5.5 years old still works like it was new and if it died tomorrow, I'd buy another one. I've never had a desktop/laptop that worked at the same great speed for such a length of time. It's actually my work laptop and so far it's handled everything I've thrown at it (I have a quite a few PSB files that are 10 gigs each). That's why I purchased another one for personal use.

I started working with computers when there wasn't anything known as a 'hard drive disk' in the computer and I was lucky because my first desktop had TWO floppy drives. All that said is because I have changed many things in my computers through the years (including the BIOS years ago when DOS was the operating system) but I didn't really want to change things in the BIOS now if I didn't need to. I was so thrilled that updating the Intel Chip was quick and easily solved my issue with both laptops. If this helps one person reduce their pain and agony with a similar problem it will be good. If it doesn't - sorry I wasted your time!

That’s very sad about Ritz Camera in the South Hills Village Mall. It was there for a long time. I grew up in Mt Lebanon and remember it well. I also remember when South Hills Village Mall was built .....

When I was shopping for my Canon 5D Mark IV, I visited the Best Buy in Cool Springs/Frankin, TN. They were well stocked and had knowledgeable people and answered all my questions. Seemed very helpful.