Certainly Open Office is a viable alternative to Microsoft Office depending on your needs because the two platforms are not 100% compatible. Certainly you can try Open Office and see if it meets your needs. I don't know about Quicken but I would imagine there is some kind of "export" feature. Whether you use that in a newer version of Quicken or move on, is up to your. I hear good things about Mint (.com) but haven't used it personally. Microsoft has discontinued Money.

You can "export" your email addresses to a USB drive and "import" them on your new computer File->Export->Address Book->Text File-> using "Browse" find the location of your USB drive. Name your file and follow the steps in the wizard to finish. On your new computer go to File->Import and follow the steps to import the data from your USB drive You can do the same for exporting/importing your Internet Favorites. It is located under File->Export. Just follow the wizard. I have never had any luck moving the actual email files. I am sure there is a way - but every attempt I have made has failed. I know there was a software you could purchase to "back up" OE, and then restore it on a new machine. I didn't want to buy anything though. You could try forwarding the emails (from your old machine) that you want to keep to yourself - then retrieving them on the new machine.

I'm now leaning more towards doing the transfers through external hard drive (gulp) - however, I'm confused on how to hook up the new computer with the old computer still hooked up. Would I just plug it in, and then connect it to our wireless home network? It seems the (old) monitor has only one hook-up spot which the old computer is plugged into. Should I wait for the new monitor to arrive (which is supposed to be about a month from now according to the estimated delivery date)? Or do I need the new computer hooked into a monitor just for transferring data? Now I'm thinking maybe I just need the new computer plugged into the monitor, and the XP computer not plugged in - lol - I'm confused. Maybe I should wait until everything arrives.

"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.