Use Linux.

I am with Bombay Duck on this one,

I have Vista on one laptop and have had no problem (also have 1.83G C2D and 4G RAM).

Now the other Laptop on XP seems to only be crawling along (1.83G C2D but with only 0.5G RAM:uhoh: there is not much I can do about that)

Thanks everyone:ok:

I basically got a very good deal on a cheap'n'cheerful Samsung Lappy with W7 on it. I'll report back on how it goes....;)

Winders 7
 

Well, first impressions are very good:ok:

Everything(except my PS Elements) has moved across seamlessly.

The only hiccup is that MS Photo Editor doesn't seem to want to open all JPGs. Not really a problem as I've got other progs, but an annoyance nevertheless:hmm:

Capetonian, all W7 editions except 'Home Premium' will run programs which will only run in XP in what is called 'XP Mode'. I believe it is similar to running Windows as a 'virtual machine' on a Mac using Parallels. i.e. you have a program which allows you to run a different operating system which you then use to run your application aka a virtual PC. In the case of W7 a virtual XP machine is included.