Once again, thank you everyone for your help. Here's another round of questions. It was recommended to me by someone on this list that I make sure that the hardware I get with my computer is Linux and speech compatible. Or maybe it was just Linux. So that when I order my computer, I can be specific. I would like to go laptop if possible, but I understand that that may not work. Again, if people could please go from experience. I do think I will wind up using a combination of Speakup with Red Hat and Emacs with Emacspeak which I know is Linux too but if it's important, well you all know. Please define acronyms and other computer terminology as you answer or you are going to get a lot of "what did that mean questions". Remember I'm learning not only about Linux but Im' catching up with the computer world in general so I'm major out of the loop. Thank you ago. Here goes. Can people here recommend based on experience: a certain type of Cd burner? I was led to understand that this is better than CD ROM because it can be used to write to as well as to read from. a printer. I don't know that I need color printing, but I do need one that is fairly flexible in terms of formatting. I will, for example, need to print everything from standard documents to labels and invoices. a sound card a video card. This should be decent quality. I'm an artist and I use a lot of color, and in the event that I ever find a way to play with my images on the computer, even if it's through a hired assistant, I should have decent color capability. It does not have to be top of the line, just decent. modem. I was led to understand by a friend that for laptop there are actually modem cards that can be taken in and out of a slot that can also be used for data cards and things. This would be nice, but I'm willing to listen to all modem suggestions. And last of all scanners. Some debate seems to have occurred on this issue and it's left me very confused. OCR shop is looking good to me at present. If there are other options please explain, but in the meantime, can anyone recommend a brand and model of SCSI scanner, and what will I need in order to hook it into my computer? If there's anything hardware wise I've left out, please feel free to mention it as well. Thank you again. And of course, references to sources of info on the web are always welcome. Anna
