John and all, thanks! Jon, you are right, and there was a card reader on my daughter's Dell. I'd forgotten about it.

I have been doing this stuff for quite a while, and was getting ready to upgrade my Win2000 to XP Pro next month. I get the disks for next to nothing through a Microsoft agreement at the university. I'll get the productivity software for $21 (MS Office 2003) and my Dreamweaver and such from them. I can't use it twice (they've made that unhappy change in the last year) so I'll have to buy the suite for the kids. I'll compare prices, having it preinstalled vs buying it at a discount but not the deep discount on campus. I'll get the campus Symantec software (Antivirus and Firewall). I used Nero on the HP, and the kids were using some form of Roxio on the Dell. Came with it. I think my Nero disk went out the door, so I'll take your recommendations to heart.

I hate the cutesy flashy video and music junk they preinstall on the home computers. Both will have HP Pro and we'll go for the more powerful productivity stuff in the small office environment.

Much of what was on my old computer is what John described in his discussion, except the drive wasn't as large, and the speed and RAM smaller. Ironic that to "replace" my computer equipment, the insurance company spends less for better equipment than I spent a few years ago.

I have to also replace all of the little dangly things from the computers. I had a USB cable thing that allowed four plugs from one, into which I had a couple of camera cables plugged, etc. With the computer and everything went my cables. So I have cameras with no cables. I'll have to find replacements or replace the entire camera. I'm fairly new to digital cameras, so I'll do some asking around before I act.

I was using 250meg zip disks, and some 100meg disks a friend gave me. If I get a drive that holds larger disks, it will still run the smaller ones. I just can't run bigger disks than the drive is rated for.

I'm going to go through the memory options carefully. The type of memory in my HP was one that didn't become the industry standard, though it was highly rated. I was preparing to buy another pair of those to up my memory, at a cost somewhere between $300 to $400. I want to get memory that is more eaily available and where there are expansion slots should I need them.

The software we lost is going to be a big expense. There was a box by each computer with the programs that were installed on it. They grabbed those. I have bits and pieces, a few disks that were somewhere else, but most of the productivity software went out the door also.

I'm off to look now. If I see a good offer, I may just get it, because it seems that if I've already purchased the new computer and they find my old one, then they simply want the old one turned in. I'd keep the hard drive, thank you very much! I am not impulsive when it comes to computers, though, so I'll do some comparing and will visit your links first. I am on the old 133mhz laptop on a dialup connection, so browsing is painstaking.

Along with the computers I need to get an additional backup drive, and this time, I'll keep it somewhere else when it isn't in use.

I've spent time this evening changing passwords so that anyone with my computer can't log onto some of my major accounts. It's bad enough they can easily see what's already in the computer. I will be a reformed character--think twice about checking "remember this password." It can bite you if the computer is stolen.

SRS