Laura

Yeah, it depends a lot on what is available at the local stores, especially Fry's. I do not want to wait on mail order, particularly. I'd rather not have to juggle hardware and installing XP on my own, though I can if I must. (If I decide to go that route, I'll probably first check to see what besides the primary drive needs replacing on the current computer. I think the power supply would, from how it's behaving, but the rest might be okay - and it's still plenty powerful for my needs, CPU and memory-wise, if that's all it needed.)

It would take more than Vista to drive me to Linux. I've made a couple attempts to go Linux in the past, and I will not make another attempt in the future unless I am very surprised by the progress it makes, or forced into it. That is the only OS that has ever brought me to tears of frustration. It seems to work well for people who get it, but it's a pain in the ass. (And I do have Unix familiarity, but Windows has spoiled me. It's pretty, it's easy, and it does what I want when I want it almost all the time. Linux doesn't, and I don't want a "toy" that takes that much time to get to do anything useful. Plus my main use for the desktop is playing World of Warcraft, and I can't see them with a Linux release, somehow. :)