Well, that could have been a lot worse. (PC update)

The computer rebuild went much better than I anticipated it might.  I am at this moment Terminal Serviced into my machine at home from my computer at work - something I didn't think was going to happen without a fight; I figured there'd be some left-handed-somersault I'd have to do to get that to work. 

My PC is now what I would call "baseline": Thunderbird, Firefox, OpenOffice, and my printer are installed.  I haven't tried the new sound card except to verify that the sounds in Windows work, but I've no reason to believe that I won't be able to record.

There's a very long list of programs waiting to be installed from there: WinAmp (done); Audacity (done): the Gimp (done); Homesite, among others.  If I was smart I'd get the rest of the programs installed then take an image of the disk as is now to make this reinstall easier next time.  I'm currently looking for an open source alternative for Norton Ghost.

Well, that could have been a lot worse. (PC update)

The computer rebuild went much better than I anticipated it might.  I am at this moment Terminal Serviced into my machine at home from my computer at work - something I didn't think was going to happen without a fight; I figured there'd be some left-handed-somersault I'd have to do to get that to work. 

My PC is now what I would call "baseline": Thunderbird, Firefox, OpenOffice, and my printer are installed.  I haven't tried the new sound card except to verify that the sounds in Windows work, but I've no reason to believe that I won't be able to record.

There's a very long list of programs waiting to be installed from there: WinAmp (done); Audacity (done): the Gimp (done); Homesite, among others.  If I was smart I'd get the rest of the programs installed then take an image of the disk as is now to make this reinstall easier next time.  I'm currently looking for an open source alternative for Norton Ghost.