If you have a high-speed connection or know someone who does, before you buy Gene has a very valid suggestion. I use Office at work and Open Office at home. I have no problems when I find it necessary to bring something home to work on. Admittedly, I only use the word processing portion. I have read some complaints of Excel and Powerpoint compatiblity, but they seem to be resolved very easily. If you try it and it works for you you've saved a few dollars. If not, you can go to plan B. DA

Before doing anything be sure to back up anything you do not want to lose including your contact list for emails. Make a note of installed programs and find the needed CD/DVD for each. I think you will have to do a fresh install of Vista, not positive but I doubt they included the ability to move backwards. The advantage would be that everything is squeaky clean. Use the Vista CD/s you have but when it requires the 25 digit authentication code use the one fixed to the computer now. If you go with a fresh install you should allow the computer to format the drive, select NTFS to make the best use of the hard drive. You should go to the Dell site, download and save all the drivers you will need before proceeding. Save these on a thumb drive or CD if the DVD player problem has been addressed. DVD player is very easy to install. simply shut down and either switch off at the rear if provided or remove the power cord. Remove both sides, remove 2 screws each side of DVD player, remove wide (2 inch) ribbon cable, flat power cable and skiiny sound wire. Slide defective DVD player out then reverse the procedure to install the new DVD player. done.

When evaluating software or hardware, it makes sense to ignore the popular press, especially the tech blogs and to an extent, consumer opinion. Change is difficult for us humans and the early reviews of XP bear it out. Below is a snapshot of cnet's Windows XP review back in 2001. I got to this page using the web archive. Note that cnet bemoans the fact that a user can only load XP on one computer. Really cnet? And note user opinions: 48% disliked XP after its first several months. Microsoft was roundly criticized for not having an OS that would work across all platforms: computer, tablet and mobile phone. Now Win 8 is negatively reviewed for not having a start button. Anyone remember when the criticism was that Windows had a start button? I use Win7 home premium on this computer and Win7 Pro on my daytrading rig. The next computer I buy will have Windows 8. I am sure it will be fine. Here is a link that might be useful: XP back then

I have never seen Open Office offered in firefox install has anyone? I have seen it offered in some other updates like java and flash in the past. also make sure when you do firefox updates and the browser reopens to a new page other than your homepage to close it and reopen it again because it only does that the first time to let you know that it did update properly it does not change the homepage the next time you reopen it will be to your usual home page. It will do the same thing if you had any updates for your add-ons it will open to that page to let you know the update was successful. If you did install Open office it will be listed in your add remove programs list in control panel.