Other than making sure you have the right cables (with the right plugs) for your new setup, there's probably not a lot you can do in advance. The router needs to recognize your machines, but the machines also need to recognize the router, so you need everything in place to get a clean setup.

As long as you have a "voice line" and an ISP that allows dial-up connection, you can always fall back to the modem if there are problems with the broadband. Just make sure the dial-up setup isn't selected as default, and it should never try to dial out. You probably will want to remove the cord; but it shouldn't be necessary. (If you just remove the cord and don't tell the "connection" not to dial, it will keep interupting you to tell you there's no dial tone.)

As mentioned, the new router should include a hardware firewall. Remember that it won't be there if you do resort to dial-up, so you probably also want the sofware firewall as well. WinXP Home does include the software firewall, although controls for it are rather crude. The SP2 updates should work ok with XP Home and are necessary on any critical setup. WinXP Pro is a better system and I would recommend that you consider an upgrade on any "$critical$" machine. The security and maintenance tools are vastly superior to XP Home. (Look up "how to safe boot XP Home" and/or "How to use System Restore" if you have doubts.)

The setup stuff you can do before the router is in place is to make absolutely certain that you have recorded (written down neatly) all the connection data, usernames, email addys, and passwords that you'll need to make the connection to her email account. Some of the protocols bound to the connection probably will change a bit with the new connection, but "guessing" about accounts and passwords is a sure path to disaster. And if you're like me, the brain farts just when you need to remember the one critical bit of info that's needed. I always write it all down ... now where did I put that ...

IF YOU GIVE THOSE WRITTEN DOWN PASSWORDS and account names to a techie who helps install your system, change your passwords as soon as you've confirmed the setup. He/she's probably honest, but might leave notes laying out somewhere ... .

If you're inclined to feel that something more is necessary, make a run through Control Panel, Network Connections, and in Hardware Manager, Network devices: hit every "Properties" button you can find, and write down everything.

(Most of what you write down there will be pretty much unnecessary, unless you need to fall back on your dial-up connection but it will keep you busy.)

In the random thoughts category - if you have WinXP Home class machines you probably don't have enormous hard drives, and if she's working a couple of GB per month of files, she's bound to say, sooner or later, "honey can I put just a few files on your machine, just for a couple of days?." Think LAN - seriously.

John