Two years ago I bought a HP Envy 17” at Best Buy .... but also ordered an Intel 1 TB SSD ... after talking with Intel ... their web page on it shows a 1.6 million hours Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) .... that is 180 years running 24/7 ... and the Geek Squad charged $100 to swap out the HD with the SSD ... and copy everything from my old 2012 Envy 17 to the new one. By the way the new laptop has no cooling fan. And that SSD is FAST. I am really happy with this.

If you’re taking your laptop .... Intel has a 1 TB SSD ... to put in place of the HD ..... its Mean time Between Failure is 1.6 million hours .... so running 24/7 ... about 180 years ... I don’t recall the part number ... that can be found on eBay and Amazon I think ....

I have a D7100 ... I bought the camera body and bought the lens separately from the same camera shop. The lens I bought is Niikon’s 18-200 mm .... and have been quite happy with it .... most of my photos are family or portraits for friends ..... and am not doing wildlife photos where their 18-300 lens would be useful. We live in a retirement community in the SW corner of Utah about 2 mile from the Arizona border .... at the eastern edge of the Mojave Desert, Southern end of the Rocky Mountains and western end of the Colorado Plateau .... if you drive 75 miles in any of 3 directions, the scenery changes dramatically. What I did not want was to do have to change lenses outside of our home .... if it is windy, there is a lot of fine grain dust that is blown around ... and I don’t want that on the sensor and internal mechanism. With the lens I have, I am not changing lenses. For the kind of photos I take, this works for me. I had an earlier version of this lens with my old Nikon N90 film camera. Good luck.

Try doing a Google Search on: how to recharge a dead Li-ion battery

In August 2016, I bought a HP Envy 17 with a 1 TB hard drive ..... my son (director of IT Projects and Programs at a college) told me that he believes that Intel has a 1 TB SSD (Solid State Drive) ..... I called Intel ... and was told the site for their 1 TB SSD ..... on that page, it showed the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of 1.6 million hours .... that is 180 years running 24/7 .... Wow ..... I then searched Amazon for that part number and found it for around $300 ..... I printed that page and took it to our local Best Buy store .... and the sales rep looked up that part number and they had it in a warehouse and he was willing to do a price match ..... and their Geek Squad would swap our the HD for the SSD for $100 .... and copy my programs and data from my 6 year old HP Envy to the new Computer ...,, this worked out great ....... that drive is super fast and reliable .......
Plus, I back up to a large external HD behind the right monitor (I have 2 - 23” monitor’s .. one on each side of the laptop screen .... this is great for photography and also genealogy research. And for additional backup .... I have 2 additional external drives .... one in a Fireproof, locked filing cabinet ... and the other in our son’s gun safe 500 miles away.
Why have I done this ..... I am used to Murphy’s Law .... I am a retired Aeronautical Engineer with a Commercial Pilot’s license from over 50 years ago .... I have a bunch of flight time as a pilot and also as a Flight Test Engineer Flying with Engineering Test Pilots in prototype aircraft in my early years .... a long time ago .... and in those years I experienced 6 partial or complete engine failures .... either with me flying or with test pilots. And other things going wrong up there (like not getting a landing gear down light after lowering the gear ..... and had crash equipment waiting for me ..... turned out to be a bad sensing switch driving the gear down light).
Anyway .... all of my digital photos, scanned prints, scanned slides, Family history, etc is too important to loose. Good luck to all of you. Family photos, genealogy and history is very precious. Good luck to all of you. And a major compliment to the person(s) who got this web site going for those interested in photography. I have really enjoyed this site.

My wife and I are from NE Ohio.... and moved to the SW corner of Utah (St. George) 10 years ago ... we are retired and live in an age 55+ housing development (www.SunRiver.com) .... and is only 2 miles from the Arizona border and adjacent to I-15 .... we rented a house for 6 months initially to be sure this is what we wanted before buying. We are really glad we came here .... and the scenery is so interesting. And the best part of here are the people here. Two of our kids went to college out west, married out west and told us “We love it out here” .... so we had to try it .... we did and sold the Ohio home .... and yes ... for the first several years I was taking a lot of photos of the scenery here.

For a smaller store, try a place where I’ve been buying my camera gear at for 30+ years in Kent, Ohio near Kent State University .... a family run business .... their pricing has been competitive with the big stores .... and they are patient with customers like me with a lot of questions:
Campus Camera & Imaging
Ask for Dan Demshar ..... (son of the owner)
Phone: (330) 678-1297
Address:
1645 E. Main St.
Kent OH 44240

I used to work at the next town east of there. When I upgrade, that is where I will go. They have several employees who are good, but Dan is the one who I go to.

Be sure to pay attention to the weather forecasts. They can have some serious snow storms. Our son and his family live not far from there. Be flexible in you schedule.

I really like Number 2 as a portrait of you and the owl ....... we used to live in NE Ohio on 5.5 acres ..... with a stream halfway back ... and a maple woods beyond the stream ..... in the 30+ years living there .... there was one time during daytime .... I was walking through the center of the woods ... and a large barn owl flew right past me ..... missing the tree trunks ..... to another part of the woods ..... it was soooo quiet .... it was silent in its flying. I miss our old place .... after retirement ... we moved west to be close to the kids and grandkids. I am an Aeronautical Engineer with a Commercial Pilots license and with a bunch of time flying with engineering test pilots and working in Aerodynamics early in my career ...... I understand your appreciation of that owl .... they are an amazing bird.

I’ve been taking photos since I was a kid .... was the photographer for our high School (1958-61) and used a 4”x5” film press Camera and used flash bulbs .... today’s technology is amazing .... I’ve wondered at times about what pat to take to sell really good photos ..., but never did ....... and over the last 20 years I’ve taken portrait photos of couples I know and print them on matte paper with a good Epson printer ..... up to 13” x 19” .... and give the photos as a gift to them ..., to give them something that they otherwise would not have. We used to live in NE Ohio and my wife had me enter a photo or two a year in our County Fair ... and I won blue ribbons and best of show ribbons .... it has been enjoyable to give people portraits that they would otherwise would not have done.

Good one Gian.

Has anyone else seen a golden dragonfly .... I have never seen one this color before.

When my wife and I were on a walk a few days ago, we saw a Golden Dragonfly .... I've never seen one of these before .... we live in an age 55+ housing development in SW Utah. Most of our lives was in NE OHIO. This was taken with an iPhone 6s+ with a slight digital zoom .... the only camera I had at that moment.

I have an Epson R2880 which I've used for years, and until I changed to Ink Owl, used only Epson Inks ..... before buying their product, I called their tech support person and grilled him with a lot of questions .... I bought their inks and empty refillable cartridges .... and ran a print identical to one done with Epson ink ... and I could not discern a difference in color ..., and their tech support guy convinced me that their ink is equally archival to Epson's ink. This change has lowered my ink costs by 90% (yea). The only problem is the time it takes to refill a cartridge with their syringe ..... I set up an area to do it (you don't want to spill any ink) .... instead of refilling one cartridge, I do all of them at the same time. I wear latex gloves and also put down a sheet of thin plastic (cut open a plastic trash bag) .... and also have good lighting.

That lifetime pass gets you and everyone in your car into the park ..... they will have you sign it in front of them when you get it .... and when entering that or other parks .... they will ask to see not just the pass but also your drivers license ...... to be sure the person hasn't loaned the pass to a friend. You will really, really enjoy Yellowstone .....seeing photos are great ... but actually being there is awesome. Our son and his family live about 90 minutes SW of Yellowstone.