I am doing a serious upgrade to my Gateway 2000 60 MHz Pentium computer.

Actually, this is only the latest in a long series of upgrades... currently it is running at 1.2 GHz, with 240 GB hard drive plus a 300 GB USB external drive (for backups), a gigabyte of RAM, a 128MB video card, a DVD burner, and a 22" LCD monitor. BUT... I am still using the original Gateway AnyKey keyboard, so it is still my original Gateway, right? It's like Grandpa's axe: The head has been replaced twice and the handle four times, but it is still the same axe.

This latest upgrade will replace everything except the monitor and the keyboard. The engineer at the radio station where I work is building me a complete new computer. (Dual-core 6 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, terabyte of hard drive (if I include the 300 GB USB external drive) on RAID-5, 256 MB video, 650 watt power supply, Wi-Fi, Blue-Tooth mouse, etc.) Not bleeding-edge top of the line everything, but enough to keep me ahead of the obsolescence curve for a few years.

Anyway, here's the question. Or several of them, actually.

1) I use Outlook Express as my e-mail client. I'd like the new computer to have all my e-mail stuff (In-Box, Out-Box, Deleted Mail, Sent Mail, etc.) just the way it is in my current computer. I have years of stuff archived and want to keep it. How do I go about this?

2) My engineer tells me that I am going to have to part with my beloved HP II-CX scanner because the new motherboard will not support the ISA card required to run it. Or maybe it is a PCI card, I don't know, been a long time since I had to deal with it. The scanner has always been the most difficult thing to deal with on every upgrade. Anyway, he says the scanner has to go. I'm guessing that scanner technology has improved and gotten less expensive (I paid nearly $1000 for my II-CX ten years ago) so I'm looking for recommendations for a replacement.

3) I'll be running 32-bit Vista for the operating system (I have a lot of legacy software and I want to maximise my chances of compatibility, so no 64-bit for now although the hardware will be 64-bit compatible). What "gotchas" should I be on the alert for?

I will have the entire contents of my current computer acessible to the new computer by means of the 300 GB external USB backup drive. This should make transfer of data and much of the software (I have kept the original files of all downloaded programs like AVG and Emplode and Exact Audio Copy and FireFox and Google Earth and Hyperterminal and ICQ and Lame and MP3TS and Spyware Doctor and Total Recorder and Trillian and Tweakui and Winamp and Windows Media Player and Winzip and ZDOOM to name just a FEW of the programs that will be reinstalled) but probably I will actually install the software only as I need it.

Is there a general strategy I should follow for getting the new computer up and running? I know from past upgrades that it will take literally months before everything is done and set up the way I want it.

tanstaafl.