Hi, I am very sorry about your loss... But I want you to know that we, the cyber community, are here for you during you time of need :0). Yes, partiion magic 8 will be necessary. I think that version 7 will do xp's ntfs, but not ext3. Only 8 can do both. If all you have is 7, then you can partition your drive, make an ext2 partion(s) and use tune2fs (within linux) to turn it into an ext3 partition if this is important to you. You will take a performance hit with win4lin, but it is not too bad. The major pitfall of win4lin is that it rebuilds a custom kernel for your system. If you want to use your emulated windows, you must boot to that Kernel. Of course, this does not stop you from compiling your own or keeping your original kernel separate, then modifying Lilo or grub to add an entry pointing to your original kernel as well... but you will still have to reboot to switch. IDK, maybe the modified kernel has no bearing on what you intend to do with your machine. My primary concern was that If I ever needed to build an new kernel or apply a patch, this may not be possible with the win4lin custom kernel. I'm not 100% positive on this, but I think if you recompile a new kernel, you would have to reinstall win4lin to take advantage of that kernel update. Also, last I checked, win4lin did not emulate NT style systems (like XP). I use VMware (cuz the company paid for it). The major advantage of VMware to me is that it bypasses all of this kernel nonsense. It is run entirely as process on its own. The performance hit is a little more noticeable than win4lin, however. I have a 2ghz machine with 512 ram, and it pushes XP reasonably well. Certainly well enough to use office applications. There is also an opensource version of this as well, called Plex86. I have not messed with it, by you may wish to check it out. Another advantage of these emulators is that you can install *any* x86 platform OS -- not just win98. So you could Have a Debian Host system with a redhat virtual system, a bsd virtual system and a windows XP virtual system! Pretty snazzy. ***BUT***, if all you are going to use in windows is the office suite, you should seriously consider looking at http://www.codeweavers.com and their crossover office package. Everything on it seems to run pretty well now, although there were some issues primarily with internet explorer 5.5... I think those are ironed out now though. Using this software, you can run Office 97 or Office 2000 (not office XP). You can also run Visio, Lotus programs, Outlook and a few other applications as well. To top it off, you *don't* have to push a whole OS on your system, you *don't* have to reboot, and it only costs $40 US! Of course, you have to pay for your own Micro$oft software. If I am not mistaken, the latitude uses the i820 sound chip? If this is true, make sure you use the alsa driver rather than the OSS. It is *WAY* better, and does not crash. My system with this card crashed the artsd at *least* twice in a work day. After switching to Alsa, it was rock solid, and sounds a *LOT* better too. Hope this was useful. See you! Chris At 11:31 PM 4/5/2003 +0100, you wrote: