Well I am taking advantage of this long weekend to clean up my PC... and by clean up, I mean reformat and reinstall essential applications...

The experience was what I expected it to be.  Installing XP, a breeze.  For all their supposed faults Microsoft does have the 'user easibility' of their install to a science.  Then I had the one problem I was expecting to have...

Installing Adobe Photoshop CS2.  I upgraded to CS2 from a 5.0 version and that just causes them fits.  It was a nightmare to call their support system, because I'm obviously (at least in their eyes) trying to pull a fast one and steal a version of CS2 (never mind my receipt that shows me actually paying for it).  But after five or six phone calls I got a person that at least would do what I told them they needed to do.  Now I'm installing Visual Studio 2005 and some other applications.

Then I finally paid up on a promise I made to a member of my church.  He is not the most computer suave and he needed help getting his new notebook setup.  So I spent a few hours doing that.  Side note: I hate computer salesmen, they took this guy and his wife for a ride.  Bunch of crooks.

Finally I got Brian Richard's computer up and running... he's a preacher, not a techy :-)  Words of wisdom... when installing updates... never, ever, ever force a shut down :-)