For those interested,

I just got my HP Netbook loaded with Jaws and a friend found a cable somewhere on the net for about 30 dollars so we could forego building one and thus were able to plug the Netbook right into the Icom 7000.  Anyhow, Saturday, after several hours just playing around with the Netbook, we finally loaded Jaws and then we discovered I was out of authorizations.  Tonight, Monday, on the other hand, I got that taken care of and Jaws now runs normally on the Netbook.  Being unfamiliar with Windows 7 and the Netbook keyboard, I plug a little external keyboard into it to make things easier but I think I'm going to go wireless for the keyboard I'll be using on the Netbook.  The first problem we addressed, my friend, who is not a ham but a computer geek and has done computer repairs for me and my wife for nearly 20 years, discovered the computer, or Netbook computer, plugs into the back of the Icom 7000 using the same jack the QSY ER touch pad uses.  Bummer; especially when you are first learning the software.  I did play around for 40 minutes, before the demo version of Jaws was up, and although Jaws is speaking everything, I took a spin around the various features and there sure were a bunch there.  So many, in fact, I got lost just trying to understand the nature of the program.  But, it is working and now, at my advanced age, I'm back into another cotton picking Learning curve.  I still miss the DOS days.  The Netbook keyboard feels great but with cross keys, such as getting function keys to work, and the like, learning the Netbook keyboard is going to take a lot more time so as I said, a wireless keyboard would probably work out much better.  This Netbook has three USB ports, fortunately, but I wonder if there is going to be a work around for both the Netbook cable and the QSY ER cable problem in plugging the two into the radio.  If anybody has heard, or has solved this problem, let me know.

Phil.
K0NX