There all good cameras. Go into a store pick each up, handle it, work the controls, look through the view finder, focus, etc. see what feels best to you. If you have a camera club nearby you may want to join first so you can get personal feedback. Knowing what issues local people have with local store can be a factor. Also many camera stores will offer discounts to local clubs.

I will have to agree with this. You have a better chance of going to Walmart and buying a rife and becoming a subsistence hunter.

The D70 is capable of producing excellent image. There are still some first class pros using the D70, though most have moved on. For example some of the image at the site http://www.fzippererphoto.com/ where produced with a D70 .

As for junk, I don't think that I have seem any Nikon, Canon, Pentax, or Sony cameras that I would really call junk. They are have there failings ( that may or may not apply to the need of a particular photographer ). But, junk, I have not seen any junk. You are dealing with an older camera and technology has moved on but the D70 is a good camera. To be honest, most people are not capable of photography that is beyond the means of camera like the D70. Want to really see nice work with an old camera look at http://www.danmassey.co.uk/landscape/greyloch.htm
Nikon 990 ...I believe that can out around 2000-2002, something like that and it is 3 megapixel. It is not the equipment it is the person behind the lens.

You don't mention other things that should influence the choice.
Also, as noted earlier, the shots are not at the same focal length.
1. What kind of shots do you normally take?
2. Under what lighting conditions?
3. For your style of shooting, how often do you change focal length?
4. What is your budget?
5. How much travel?
6. For your shots, what degree of quality do you need?

Other people could probably think of more questions? The fact is that in making these choices it is best to step back and look at the big picture as it apples only to the person behind the camera.

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution and has issues of it's own. With all of the Windows apps that the original poster says that she has the option of switching OSs appears to be off the table. As sad as it sounds it appears that the path that she has chosen, using the service that she has paid for, is the best recourse at this time. And most important, had you read the thread you would realize that the issue is her Windows is crashing. Therefore the option that you mention makes on sense.

There are a number of ways to improve her system in the future, but in her case, with all of her Widows apps an OS switch will probably never be one. At an extreme she may consider running a VM server, but that is an option that she should not be forced to take. There is no sane reason that she should not be able to run her system as she intended, using a Windows OS and Windows apps with a reasonable backup system. As painful as it is, I believe that the course that she has chosen, pushing Dell to fix the problem, is the correct action.

I beg to differ. I am running Windows 7 and as recently as a couple of weeks ago I would get intermittent blue screens of death. I am sure that it was the blue screen of death, having work of a software company of 10 years as the senior QA analysis. It was my job to known. I my recent case of blue screen I found it to be a MS service patch had been downloaded to the PC for a service that I did not need so I disabled the service. WMPNetworkSvc. The problem disappeared. I had previously tried the revert of previous config that you describe, but the problems would still intermittently occur.

This seems like a very fair assessment to me. In fact while I will also agree that more often than not digital and film will produce different results, though some times that difference is greatly diminished. And quite often the film will produce a result that most people find more pleasing, however there are at time digital images that will out shine film for the same scene. It is a very complex matter of individual skill of the photographer, personal taste of the observer, and in some cases the venue among other things. Good photography is as much art as it is craft. While worthy of debate it is not worth loss of sleep over. Just enjoy it all, film, digital, black and white, and color.

Very nice work. I think that the split toning sets it off very well.

This is true. However though I despise Microsoft I have found that Windows 7 (which the original poster says that they have) does a fair job of self maintenance including Auto-defrag. (witch in the case of my computer was the way it came set up). If the system is not set for Auto-defrag (but I suspect that it is) then by all means I would recommend doing so. This will defrag the machine automatically at predetermined intervals.

No problem I am reluctant to recommend equipment because it has to be a personal fit and I will not recommend stores unless I and others that I have known have had good service. My experience with Show Case in Atlanta and years ago Thompson in Knoxville was excellent while my experience with Wolf/Ritz was not so great. So I understand your feelings.

You may find this site of interest.
http://vuhelp.net/computer-networking/5578-latest-best-lcd-monitor-photo-editing-2011-a.html .

What's money? Is that something that the 1% has? I don't recall seeing money.

I suppose that I should point out that Clyde Butcher shoots with film and has a number of very large format cameras. One of which is only a little smaller than the state of Rhode Island.

Very nice black and white. You may already know of Clyde Butcher ( http://www.clydebutcher.com/ ), but for the newbies that don't I would suggest looking at his work before passing judgment on b&w. If you can look at this work and not be in awe, then, I believe, there must be something missing in your soul.

I see the advice that you have been given here as good sound advice and the thing that scares me is that it sounds of if you have already tried a lot of it. If so it appears as if the time may be fast approaching when you must chose between one of four options. One, jump off the bridge by reinstalling the OS.
Two, get a Mac and start all over.
Three, sent the machine to a good local computer repair shop ( good luck finding one of those) and leave it there until it is fixed.
Four, start uninstall every app that is not critical. Most computers are overloaded with useless junk anyway. You may have something that runs in the background and you are totally unaware of it. Not uncommon with Windows apps Adobe in particular will do this. MicroSoft may be the evil empire, but after working the last 10 years as senior QA analyst I can tell you that Adobe caused us almost as much problems as the OS.