New XP machine arrived today. Hurrah!

Nothing quite like that to put a bit of zest in your activities. Doesn't take 10 minutes to login now and I'm hoping it won't take 5 to log out (while I wait to press the button to actually turn off the machine when it's 'safe'). Given that I'm an information professional expected to spend a fair bit of my day using the PC and accessing electronic resources via it, not to mention training students and showing them 'what's what' etc, it did seem a little, urh, odd would be the polite word that it's only now this is happening. Still, at least it's happened now and not in a year or something.

Very small, very black Dell box. Screen still 17" but more of a margin round the edges. USB in the front which should be handy and still has a floppy drive which I thought I'd seen the last of. Be fascinated to know if I ever put anything in it. The DVD drive appears to be a RW as well which may be useful.

Softwarewise, Microsoft Office 2003 has arrived and Project and Publisher been added which I'll find useful. Acrobat has gone from v5 to 7 which is an improvement and our mindmapping software has advanced a bit too.

I can even print to the printer that's under my right elbow which is nicer than trawling off to a large shared machine elsewhere.

Nice young lady came and did the physical installation - not what you tend to expect from IT type services - but a refreshing change as she came with something of a customer service attitude and a 'can do' approach to some of the problems she faced.

Remains to be seen how much I can add to it in the way of scanner or Palm syncing, but we'll see. I've thanked the boss already; seemed only fair before starting next week with a list of all the things I now want to add/do!

Scanner
Doublesided printer (don't start!)
Palm sync cradle
headphones (no chance of speakers in the fishbowl)
access to C: drive?