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JTB, I was aware of that post. Isn't that a laptop drive though? I'm looking for a desktop drive.

oh well, will you be needing a copy of windows 7 home edition to load on it? or how about 3?

Naw, this is for a friend with an older HP desktop machine, probably with only 512 MB of memory, using Windows XP. The drive has the HP recovery partition. My friend isn't that computer smart and won't even have Internet access. I could go about formatting and rebuilding everything but all the bells and whistles won't even matter, as the computer will be used mostly just for creative writing. Once I get started rebuilding and optimizing someone's computer I usually wind up spending 16 or more hours on it, but in this case I doubt all that effort would be put to good use; this time I think I'll be happy with a good copy and system/security updating.

if all its going to be used for is writeing use ubuntu and kick M$ to the curb. im seeing if i can save one out of the new batch of dead computers.

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, my friend had contacted PCs for People in St. Paul, who provide computers to low income recipients. Yesterday I helped to pick one out. We got a new computer for $50, including a nice Viewsonic monitor, keyboard, and Microsoft laser scroll mouse, loaded with Windows XP Professional. I found what I believe was the best of the batch they had available, and the best monitor. Everything about this computer is sufficient for my friend. But obviously, given that these computers are assembled from secondhand parts, something is going to fall short of ideal. In this case again it's the hard drive. This computer has a 20 GB Maxtor hard drive from around the year 2000. It works, but is a bit noisy and not especially speedy. Also the computer does not have a dial-up modem. I'd like to install a 56kb modem in case my friend can eventually afford dial-up Internet service. I'm not sure I have an old one, so if anyone has a V.90 modem (NOT soft modem) they can spare, please let me know.

I'm still looking for a V.90 PCI internal modem card. If anyone can part with one, let me know.

ill try and bring one wed.

Thanks!