Glen- Here is my advice: apologise if I repeat anything.
(entering techie geek mode)

Get thee to PC Club. Have a system built running WIndows XP Pro or similar level of Linux, or Mac OS with a large (70 GB plus) hard drive and at least 2 GB of RAM. Their prices are extremely competitive and thirty to fifty dollars less than Best Buy on components.

Get the fastest processor you can, get the most memory that you can. STAY AWAY FROM WINDOWS VISTA.

The following programs are excellent, free (donate if you want to) and simple to use: Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird (http://mozilla.org, follow linkage) Open Office 2.0 (http://www.openoffice.org) Spybot Search and Destroy (http://www.spybot.info) and Avast! Antivirus (http://www.avast.com).

I use Gaim for instant messaging. I have Windows Firewall set up for the firewall at this point because Spybot and Avast have enough additional layers of protection that I don't see the need to fool with Zone Alarm or Black Ice Defender.

I use open source software whenever possible and my Open Office will save docs in M$Office formats that are totally compatible, so there are no problems there.

With Firefox you should install the Noscript and Adblock extensions at minimum.

With IE7 you want everything buttoned down.

Why not Vista? Because it just came out, it's buggy as hell, and has lots of other issues with security, phoning home at every boot, etc. It also requires at minimum 2 GB of RAM to run well.

XP Pro works, you can still get it, and if you partition the drive as follows it will increase performance: 10GB FAT32 (install XP on this drive) 30 GB NTFS, 30 GB NTFS, XP keeps a seperate partition of approx. 8 GB.

(end geekery, enter braggery)

My PC is an AMD Athlon 1.25 Ghz processor with 2.5 GB of RAM running WinXP Pro on an approximately 80 GB drive. I swapped out the old ATI Rage 128 graphics card (anyone want one?) for a BFG Geforce 6200 and it screams.

I snagged an Envision 19" diagonal widescreen LCD monitor for less eyestrain that is Vista ready. IF I want to upgrade I can. RIght now I do not intend to upgrade.

Hubby, who has been in IT for longer than I have been alive, is obscenely jealous of how the upgrade turned out.

I used to have Linspire 5.0 on the box but got tired of renewing my click-and-run subscription, and I wanted to play Second Life. ;-)

Hope this helps!

Mary