1) May I ask why you are swearing off Apple or Linux? If I *had* to choose between XP and vist I would go with XP, Vista needs an SP or two befreo the kins are worked out.
2) Depends on wht youre going to do with it, if were not talking processor intensive thins you might better invlest in a mid line dual core and get a better video card or more memory. I still have P3 systems that work fine for me but im up to a few gig of memory.
3) Again its gets to the usage, I usually do well with ne lage drive but I also have a low end nas device at home for backup storage
4) I dont use anythig but on baord graphics cards so I cant really tell you what to use here but I get by fine for civ with lower end cards..
5) Unless you have a major! sweet pipe coming into your house any old network card will do.
6) definatly go flat panel if youre going to want to use a KVM staty away from DVI otherwise DVI is the way to go (youll need your graphics card to match)
7) Ive had alot of luck with teh HP photosmart all in one C5800. Its a usb or network printer which is nice becuase if your kid and you are going to have systems on your network you can print and scan over the network to your machine.
8) How much are we talking about transferring?
Why am I swearing off Apple/Unix?
20 years of living with DOS/Windows, XP at work, a ton of legacy Windows games and not enough time to learn a new OS.
I’ll be moving about 40 GB of data.
Hey did you hear? According to w3counter.com all versions of Linux combined finally tied Windows 98 at 1.34%! I know you’re excited, even though Linux didn’t actually rise at all, but since Windows 98 fell 0.02% it finally put them in a tie.
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.pnp