After 6 years I finally got a new computer! The old one works except when it doesn't. I think the power supply is going. Anyway it's only about 500 mHz. The new one is 2.6 mHz. Only slightly faster! right.
This one I had built. No software of any sort. The guy who built it for me would load everything for $50 but I figured I can manage it and have a bit of fun doing it. XP Pro went smoother than I expected and the rest was pretty easy. I had a bit of grief last night with an older mouse driver but once I finally got past the parse error dialogue deleting the driver was easy.
Nice thing about it is there is no proprietary junk installed by the manufacturer. No AOL, no arcane partitions for system restores (XP does a good job of that all by itself). Just what I want. Most software companies have been good at sending registration information if I lost it. Stardock of course is first rate. I don't even bother to store their info as they supply it on demand quite quickly!
I've got everything I wanted loaded now, I think. What the kids will want added is another story.