happyWow! The Dell Dimension 4550 came sooner than expected. Didn't I just put the order in on Friday? Got it connected to the Internet via cable modem in just a few minutes. I must say the OOBE (Out of Box Experience) on this one is pretty good.
Then I opened the case to add the Zip drive and the good hard drive from the old PC. The IDE cable supplied by Dell did not have enough length between the middle and end connectors so for now, the zip drive is just hanging in the drive bay not slotted into the rails. I will have to find a longer IDE cable, if there is such a thing. But the Zip drive works so that will do for now.
Switched the Desktop and Explorer to Windows Classic mode because the new interface is annoying. (Probably an acquired taste.) Reinstalled some of the software, including ActivePerl, Vim, MailWasher, ZoneAlarm, Palm Desktop and AvantGo. Will do the rest later but for now, I have a usable set of software and easy access to most of the data from the old PC.
A few other boxes arrived with the computer. One contains a set of speakers, which I won't use much but will be nice to hook up to the PC. The other has a digital camera, the free item that I picked.
The scanner is a problem. There is no XP driver for the Umax Vista-S6E. (Can you say obsolete?) Even if I installed NT 4.0, for which there is a driver, it won't work because the scanner's adapter card is not a PCI card and the new PC only has PCI slots. Looks like I will have to buy a new scanner. Time to hit the hardware reviews.