I am going to get a whole house surge protector. But should I also invest in getting "good" surge protectors for my electronics (tv and related peripherals, computer and peripherals?). If so, could someone point me toward a good one. I wouldn't know what makes a surge protector good (and think just getting expensive is not the way to make the selection). I do have surge protectors in all those areas, but don't think we selected them with any real knowledge. Thank you. Lynn. PS - and my efforts to copy are delayed - bc. I can't find the replacement drive. We received so many packages last week - and during the power outage - so I was opening and putting things away by flashlight - and so far, I can't find it. have this scary feeling that my husband or cleaning woman thought the box was trash and tossed it out. Hope not.

I'm back and searching for a good, reliable hard drive enclosure that has esata connection (for faster data transfer). I didn't realize that the drives we discussed above were only USB transfer. I had bought the Nexstar CX: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cart/view-upsell.html?ie=UTF8&HUCT=2&newItems=U35WX1CZO87WNR%2C1 But when I went to set it up, discovered that it is only USB connection. I didn't realize that by sata they meant the hard drive type - not how the external drive would connect to my pc. So now I'm still looking for a reliable hard drive enclosure - with esata connection (and actually, one with usb and esata would be great). Thanks. Lynn.

Your bigger problem will be the drivers. Get those first and save to external media. Assuming this is a store bought computer and not a home build you can use any XP Home CD to install the operating system. The difference is when it comes time to add the 25 digit code you use the one fixed to the computer case and not the one on the CD. After loading XP grab some security then go for the XP updates, there are well over 100 to install and most will install automatically. About half way through IE8 pops up asking you to instal and stops all progress until you give it instructions.

More memory is good but at some point there is a diminishing return on the investment and that point is a function of what you are doing with your computer. Things like first person shooter games, video editing, photo editing (of very large files) all benefit from lots of memory. Writing an email to Aunt Betty doesn't require very much memory at all because the computer can process information far faster than you can type. Same thing for the Internet, your computer can render pages faster than your connection can supply the information. So if you have a slow internet connection, you're not likely to experience much, if any improvement. With that said, 4 gigs is probably a pretty good number. If you really want a WOW factor, get a solid state drive and use that for your O/S and critical applications. To try and answer some of your questions: - Windows doesn't care about the physical drive or any logical partitions. It does make good sense to install Windows 7 on the newer, faster drive. You'll get the best performance that way. When it comes time to get rid of XP, everything will be on one drive and that, if nothing else, should help you keep things mentally organized. - My understanding is that you have two physical drives, one with a functioning version of XP and the other blank. If that is not correct, say so NOW. - When you go to install Windows 7, it will recognize that there is another operating system (Windows XP) already installed. Windows 7 won't do anything to XP other than to set up the dual boot. Essentially it's computer language that says, "XP is there, Windows 7 is here, which one do you want to use?" - Logical partitions to a drive a largely a function of personal preference. Understand that it is more difficult (but not impossible) to non-destructively repartition a drive after you put data on it. If you, for example, have a partition for music, another for videos, and a third for pictures and find down the road that you have a lot more videos than music, it becomes more difficult to rearrange things. My suggestion is a single, large partition and use folders to organize your data.