to help me work on my film, my friend is letting me borrow her laptop. actually, it's not her laptop. apple computers is letting her work try out a refurbished ibook and she has commandeered it. i, in turn, have commandeered it from her. another friend let me have a copy of final cut pro. i've had some issues but i think things are going well. i really like this laptop--i wish i had my own. the only thing that is really bugging me is that i cannot open my old class files for final cut pro. i thought i would clean up a bit a film i did last summer so that it would be a tighter project, however the file will not open at all. final cut simple does not recognize it. i am using v3 and the file was v3, however i don't know the exact version number. i don't know if there's some strange final cut issues between the various v3s. i do know that v4 is not backwards compatible. this gives me a little fear about buying a nice computer and final cut one day. it will mean i will not be able to go back and edit my old films. then again, they may be so horrible that i will not want to. while i still have a decent chance, i should archive onto digital media all my old audio and video projects (vhs, reel-to-reel) so that i can easily access them in the future. i just need to find someone with a reel-to-reel player.