Both Terry and Fred,
       Let's start with Terry. I also was born and schooled in England and so was raised in both "Imperial" and CGS units.
Ambidextrous as you say Terry. I'll simply ignore "Honourable because I'm English" as a complete non sequitur. The rest makes sense.
       Fred, it's really quite easy. The English based their length measurements upon the "foot". Which was, at the time, the handily available appendage of an honourable King. Since his inevitable demise the basic unit has been inaccessible. But standards and sub-standards had been prepared with the usual English foresight. The French, several centuries later, based their "Metre" upon a fraction of the circumference of the Earth. Certainly more lasting than a mortal kingly tootsie, but hardly truly accessible. The advantages of the metric system lie not in the units themselves but in the sub-units which are always in multiples of ten. Since most of us have ten digits readily available to count upon that makes life in the metric lane somewhat easier for most of us. The "foot" was OK but then the bureaucrats came along with inches, yards, furlongs, rods, poles, perches and miles. Bureaucracy baffles brains, as ever.

       Simply Fred,  1 inch = 2.5 cm = 25 millimetres. And 5 miles = 8 Kilimetres.

   Getting back on topic, thank you both for your help. I'll let my last computer live out it's life as the engine of my son's printer setup.

   All the best to both of you and everyone else in the Qimage school,

Basil

Thanks Terry, I remember you too from past years.

I think I'm moving towards simply shipping one of our two existing computers down to my son 2,500 miles away.
I've been trying to avoid that because of handling risks but Fedex seem to be reasonably careful even if a bit costly.
Both of our computers were custom-built in May, 2011 so, like me, they're a bit long in the tooth.
Both have an i7-2600K cpu on an Asus P8P67 m/b with 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 RAM. Storage is 4 x WDC Caviar Black 2TB drives and the boot drive on the one I will ship is a 750GB Seagate Momentus hybrid drive. That hybrid drive came about because I messed up the original 256GB OCZ Vertex 3  SSD and I didn't quite know how to "secure erase" the SSD. So I chickened out and swapped in the Seagate hybrid drive.

Moving into a 685 sq. feet apartment in July 2013 means that two big tower desktops would probably take up too much room although twin computers in a home have a lot of advantages when one of them gets screwed up. SO shipping one down to my son seems reasonable. More or less <Grin>.

Thanks for reminding me about Mike Chaney's notes on modern monitors. I remember thinking when I first read it, that like all of Mike's stuff, it was clear, easy to read, and helpful. As I said a day or so ago, I'll leave my son to purchase whatever monitor he wants to use for his printer/computer combination. But I'll let him see Mike's comments and a few reviews of current IPS monitors.

As a complete aside, what is the significance of the "Metric" in your "handle" ?
I ask because I spent about a quarter century at work representing some of the Canadian nickel producers on the various committees of TC 155 of the International Standards Organisation.

Again, thanks Terry.
Ditto to Fred

Regards,
Basil

Thanks Fred, I rather expected/hoped that you'd be the first to reply.
My own preference is still for a desktop but I'm beginning to realize I'm something of a dinosaur in that respect.

Let's hear if anyone else drops pearls of wisdom in front om, I certainly hope so.

As I said, good to hear from you again Fred.

Cheers,
Basil

Hi everyone,
     I've been off these boards for quite a while. I would now be very grateful for whatever advice any of you can give me.

Here's my situation: .... Last December I reached 83, last February we sold our house. In July 2013 we move into a "Seniors Retirement Residence". Last stop before the crematorium <Grin>. But not much room compared to our old home. So packed up all my photography gear and the Epson Stylus Pro 7900 printer and shipped it off to my youngest son, 2,500 miles away.

Now I wish to add a computer to that lot to run the printer and associated software such as Qimage Ultimate.
Until now I have always bought tower desktop computers. But this looks like a smaller computer might be sufficient.
I'm going to leave the choice, and purchase, of the monitor to my son.

What are your suggestions for the computer specifications for this job ?

Hopefully, and sincerely,
Basil Meddings

One member of my family is thinking seriously about getting a 24" wide printer.
Can anyone offer comments about the relative pro's and con's of the CANON iPF6100, EPSON 7900 and  the HP Z3200 ?
Are there discernible differences in the B & W output ?

Thanks for any advice.
Basil