Hi Gil, Wow! it looks like there's enough reading on the sites you mentioned to fill my spare time until I get that PC. Thanks for taking the time to not only answer the questions I intended to ask but those which I did not intend by my misspelling of Linux. I couldn't believe I misspelled it throughout my note, until I read it for myself. One more small question: when I search for an ISP which will accept Linux users, am I asking for a "shell account" or something else? And, again, thanks for your information. Walt