1) I had a thread here last year about my CD drive not working. I had tried removing and reattaching the drive, uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, and some other stuff that was suggested, but nothing worked. I could not find a new drive to match my laptop so I went and bought an external one last night. After installing the software for the external drive, the internal one works too now. Not a waste of a purchase, however, as I also have a netbook I can use it for.

2) I had another thread here a month ago about my ink printer not printing black. After spending a few hours of trying to clean the capilllaries, I ran out of ink. When I need to scan an urgent document, the scanner would not work because the printer was out of ink. Apparently, Epson does not you to even scan without buying cartridges from them. Caveat emptor. Got a new cartridge last night, now it works great, but I will probably be looking at a toner printer and a separate scanner.

Hope this helps anyone who might encounter these problems.