I bought my iPod and iPhone from my local Apple Store. I have been in many times to ask questions and they are very happy to answer them. The Apple stores have several free workshops where you can learn all about the phone. When I buy my next computer it is going to be an Apple in large part because I can drive 10 minutes and ask questions about my new computer, not have to talk to someone across the globe! Ginny

"Everything" covers a lot of ground, including some things you may not want. Were you running any 16-bit apps on that XP box? Be prepared for them to not run under 8.1 . Are you sure there are no "nasties" lurking around? If there are, they may get transferred too. As to Documents-Pictures-Video...do you really have so many that it would be inconvenient to put them on a flash drive and simply drag/drop them to the new computer? I won't address email except to say that if you really need to retain old ones, you should research the instructions specific to the email client you use. You could also forward the important ones to your own junk email address and then forward them back to yourself once you have email set up on the new machine. I am not inclined to trust anything that Microsoft says is "easy", but that's just me.

If you're working with people from the company that produced the app, there's nothing more to know or any more expertise to plug into. I guess the lesson you've learned is that data should have been backed up along the way. And, of course, that's true of any digital data anywhere because a hardware failure (always a possibility with any device) will cause a complete loss of all data it contains. Apple has a tendency, a very consumer unfriendly one as far as I'm concerned, of forcing operating system upgrades and then orphaning any devices that stay put. I have two Apple devices in the house that work fine but as with yours, can't be updated and can't download any more apps. The Android world does that in a way (new apps aren't always backward compatible to older versions of the OS) but with more flexibility. Android phones can be connected to a PC with a USB charging cord. With the regular Windows Explorer program used for file manipulation, folders on the Android device can be accessed ( in the exact same way as with a PC's drives or attached memory devices) to copy or delete any folders or files as desired. I don't know if the same is possible with an iPhone, maybe it is?

I won't worry about finding that particular ad, the Internet has more than enough to choose from. In my quick search right now I came across Lynda.com.. Lynda.com is a fabulous place to look for videos on a large amount of topics, including learning the play the piano! I heard about Lynda.com years ago through my PC computer club. The classes are $$ but my library and probably many other libraries subscribscribe to it and with my library card I can take the classes for free. I hope many libraries across the country subscribe to newspapers, online classes like this one, we the public certainly do benefit.