Here is from a page I found that may help you. I will include the link as it has a couple of pictures for you: Copying files to a flash drive on a PC: Open My Computer and see which drives are shown. Most computers, for example, have a hard disk such as a C: drive and a few removable storage devices such as a floppy drive, a CD-ROM drive, and perhaps a zip drive. Insert the flash drive into the USB port and watch to see where the USB flash drive appears. Most will appear as removable storage, but some will instead appear as hard drives. Note the name Windows is using to refer to the flash drive ("Removable Disk (G:)," for example). Open My Documents or the location from which you want to transfer files to the flash drive. Select the files or folders you want to save to the flash drive by left-clicking on them. To select more than one, hold down the CTRL key while you click and select all of the files you wish to save. Right-click on the file(s) or folder(s) you selected, then select Send to, then select the name you saw appearing in My Computer for the flash drive ("Removable Disk (G:)," for example). When the copying is finished, do not immediately remove the flash drive from the USB port. Instead, left-click on the Remove Hardware icon located in the System Tray. A window containing a list of the USB devices will appear. Left-click on the Safely Remove Mass Storage Device line that matches your flash drive (for example, Safely Remove Mass Storage Device - Drive(G:)). When you see the following message appear in the bottom left toolbar, it is, as it says, safe to remove the flash drive from the USB port; you may close the message or ignore it, as it will close itself automatically: Of course, you want to use the instructions for XP, as that is what you are running. Ignore the Mac stuff. Here is a link that might be useful: How to Use a USB Flash Drive

I think there's two issues at work with your comment mikie. The first, which many historians have spoken about, is that the lost habits of letter and diary writing mean that much less material will be available for historical analysis in the future. Email archives aren't as common as boxes stuffed with old letters, and email archives typically have much more worthless stuff in them. The second thing, the changes in storage media over time, I think isn't so much of a problem. There used to be lots of stuff stored on 8 and 5.25 inch floppy disks. They're not lost to the future, that worth keeping was migrated to later generations of storage media. Places like the Library of Congress and National Archives are digitizing many parts of their collections to protect the availability of their contents for the future. All that stuff gets rolled forward as technology changes.

Well I am using Mepis7.0 and a version of Ubuntu7.10 called gOS currently. I would recommend Mepis7.0 highly to any new users because most everything just works out of the box with Mepis with not too much tinkering around. Ubuntu is also a good choice however I much prefer the KDE desktop to the Gnome which comes with Ubuntu, so instead I would recommend Kubuntu which is Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome. I would NOT recommend gOS, I am a global moderator on the gOS forum and really it is just a mess, it is a very incomplete version and the people that put it out have changed it several times and not always for the better. So because of all the problems with it I just do not recommend it. The great thing about linux is there is a flavor for everyone! And lots of linux community out there willing to help. Changing from dial up in my opinion is absolutely one of the best moves a person can make! It becomes a whole new world. I am on verizon fios which I love because it is so stable and extremely fast. IF you get a good modem/router that has a built in Nat firewall on, and install a software firewall like zonealarm free you will be on your way to stopping the bad guys. With Linux of course that is less of a worry but there are firewalls and antivirus programs for linux, in fact in Mepis7 the guarddog firewall comes with it set up and on, as well as ClamAV antivirus, pretty neat since it is all free. Most of the versions of linux come as a live cd which means you can take the cd put it in your computer then reboot the pc so that it now boots from the cd drive (on some pc you have to set the boot order in the bios) when the pc boots up it is running off of the linux cd, nothing gets installed to your pc, you can log in to the demo and look around and use it just like it was installed on your computer, you can get a good feel for it that way and even browse the internet using the provided firefox browser. When you log off you take the cd out and next time you reboot you are right back to your regular pc. To install it once the live cd is in and you are running from it there is an install button right on the desktop of the linux distro you just hit install and follow the directions. Now if you are going to be doing a dual boot system that is more detailed since you will have to do some partitioning to keep your windows partition and create a new partition for linux to live on. But again that partition program is built right into the live cd and is pretty easy, however I would get some one who knows a little about partitioning to help out. You do not want to accidentally wipe out your windows!

So long as you've backed up any important data files, I wouldn't fret about losing these antique programs. There are many choices of free and easy to use software you can press into service in a flash. Even Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) offers free software-like apps for word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, etc., that are completely compatible with current competing programs (which what you now have may not be). And, file backups are unnecessary (unless you're paranoid), Google keeps your files in their proverbial "cloud". To replace your (almost) 10 year old version of Quicken, try Mint. Now owned by Intuit, it's free, highly recommended and widely used. Play with it now, switch over on Jan 1, and wave goodbye to Quicken 2003. Or, get a new Quicken, it's not that expensive and it'll serve you for another 10 years.