Ant & BOFH.............
Thanks for those points you raise. I must admit that I hadn't given too much thought to the wear and tear aspect so I'll dig out the spare IDE cable in the cupboard.
Incidentally, I installed Vista OK although it took a little longer than I anticipated. I've had an initial recce and it's rather more of a leap from XP than XP was from Win98. The biggest snag so far is the inability of the system to do anything with my printer although it is listed on the dropdown menu of the printer installation wizard. Still, 'tis early days
Thanks again, Gents
N o t a