1) Screen way to small. Largest selection 800x600. No correction
found.

Reply: You either do not have the right graphics driver installed or the monitor
is set improperly, or both. The most likely culprit is the graphics driver. When
the kernel cannot detect the right driver, it will default to a lowres setting
or install a generic driver which often results in the same thing. This is
usually corrected by installing the proper restricted graphics driver from the
repositories.

Go to System, Adminstration, Hardware Drivers and check if it can find one. If
not, it may still be in the repos, if you search for it. If it is Nvidia or ATI,
then Envy can build one from source for you.

2) Ran update manager. Had 253 items, now down to 182. Get this
error: E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg
--configure -a' to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open( ) failed, please report.

Reply: Open the terminal and type: sudo dpkg --configure -a

Make sure that you do not have a packagem manager running when you do this as it
won't work.

4) Bring down iso file; burn CD. All seems OK. Canoot figure out how
to load 8.10. Nothing on the disc will start it. Read & read.
What is the secret?

Reply: You likely burned it as a data disk. Check the contents of the disk. If
it says name.iso where name is the distro name then it is not burned properly.
Think of an iso as a compressed format, like a xip file. You need to open it to
access the contents. In your burning programme you need to open the ISO and burn
the contents to the CD. If you did this and get the error then you may have a
bad burn, a defective CD, or a bad download (do the checksums match?). See:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

5) Finally there is some calendar in the lower right; no idea how it
got there and no means to get rid of it. Typing this in the blind
since the calendar is blocking the way too small screen.

Reply: Try clicking on it. It is likely a toggle. Failing that then right click
and look for options to close. Failing that type: xkill in aterminal and click
on it with the skull and crossbones. Be careful not to click on the desktop, as
it will shut down your desktop.