Rikki, kind of you to enquire about my condition. I am still recovering (slower than most people) from my hip surgery. So I have less pain then I used to but my muscles are weak from the operation and lack of activity. I am doing all the therapy things but it is slow to recover from all this for me.

I still plan on staying with kontakt and Bandstand as my main sound sources. NI are busily correcting bugs in both. In the case of Bandstand, NI is developing a smaller Wavetable such that the instruments will load close to instantly. In addition, there will be a larger version for enhanced quality. The larger wavetable works well for live performances in high class night spots or similar venues (book stores, etc.). If NI succeeds in its updates there software should work well in all live performance settings.

I may even give Hypersonic 2 a try but I will now wait to see what comes of these updates.

In addition, I will acquire NI Kore to see if I can replace forte Ensemble as my host software.

I have kept my hardware unchanged for the last year or more. My system remains very reliable....but I use it only for music. I even do all my music editing (instruments, styles, midis and so on) on my general purpose computer. This keeps my music computer from having crashes.

I am very sad to hear that your laptop failed....must have worked it to fast....but I am unbearably sad that you bought an arranger keyboard.... Rikki has to many resources...oh well!!!

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 04-09-2006).]