Chris, I know a lot more about Windows, and I do know that many of these XP machines come with a restore disk that will wipe out other partitions if given half a chance. I ditched Windows and am using my old machine, which ran Windows really slow anyway and isn't worth more than $20 on the open market. Best of all, I don't have to worry about accidentally screwing anything up. If you ask around, being a computer science student, you could probably score reject computers from your school or your command-line impaired buddies. I am only an amateur programmer -- never graduated from college -- but I don't think I could call myself a real programmer until I learn UNIX. So just think of this as part of your education! --Debee
