I'm not a professional photographer (nor do I play one on tv) but I certainly shoot a LOT of pictures! With the advent of the digital camera, you seldom see me without my camera in hand. I use it for family pictures, taking pictures at cemeteries, of documents, and even my pets. I'm getting better with the digital camera and I, like millions of others, love it since you can see immediately if a shot came out and don't have to pay for prints that are out of focus, too light, too dark, too anything! But .... One of my daughters is a professional photographer and as such goes to an annual seminar held somewhere in the US. This year they were in Chicago and in attendance were some of the greatest photographers and instructors in the country. Yesterday when she stopped in to see me I was burning a cd of my next set of pictures to get them off my system. She reminded me of something that she had told me after the seminar that we all need to remember. We normally take photos with our digital (or scan the paper ones), put them on the computer and leave them there, or burn them to a cd. We spend hours copying these priceless photos - and as I thought, they were preserved for 100's of years on that little cd. Well ... maybe not. According to an expert speaker of this subject, he stated that we might unintentionally have a "lost generation" with no photographs. No, it's not that our system failed or the cd ended up in the microwave by mistake. It's because there is NO guarantee of how long our pictures will remain pristine on a cd. Manufacturers say 100 years give or take, but they haven't been around long enough to prove this right or wrong. He suggested two things: (1) Every 2-3 years copy your pictures from one cd to a new one. Every time you open a photo image, there is a little deterioration (and I don't get technical, I knew this but don't pretend to understand all of it). So don't open up those picture files too many times. Copy them to a new cd as needed, dating it so you know when you last made the transfer. (2) Print off your favorites, those that you don't want to lose. You can print them off yourself rather inexpensively on Kodak, Fuji or like photo papers, or you can let a company do it for you. I'm not plugging any particular store or business; there are many who do this - WalMart, Walgreens, local photo shops. I use Walgreens on line as it is so quick - I transfer the prints to them and in an hour can pick them up or have them mailed to me. I don't even have to fight the machines at the stores which I manage to either goof up or am 20th in line. The store sends me an email when they're ready and I can pick them up. But - we need a paper copy of our best photos - those precious ones of our family past or present. I thought I would pass this on to you for your information. On my family photos (and I'm scanning slides and negatives too); I keep a digital copy on a cd, send a copy to my daughter for backup and print many of them off after restoring with a photo program those that are torn or faded. (I leave a lot of the latter up to my daughter; she has a better program than I do and more expertise). Hopefully in all this, we will have photos of our past family and our present family to cherish when we're too old to see the computer monitor any more! Sandi