MJ,
Congrats on the sucessful build, though it's probably better that you don't make a case out of starboard... ;) Good job with oainting the CDRom too!

Rap,
As far as saving favorites goes, open Internet Exporer---->Click on File on the top left corner----->Click on "Import and Export..." -----> Then follow the wizard to export your bookmarks to a file of your choice (either on your harddrive, a floppy, or burn them to a disc). You can do the same thing with Outlook Express to save e-mails. If your using a different broser or e-mail client then the steps are similar, but the wording is a little different. As far as saving regular files, Like MJ said, if you have a cd burner you can burn them to a disc. If not, they are cheap!!! A decent cd burner can be had for 20-40 bucks (maybe cheaper, try www.newegg.com for ideas on prices. They are usually as cheap, or cheaper than anyone else) Western Digital makes a decent hard drive. I prefer Seagate, though. They seem to have a very good rep and better warranty as well as being about the same price. Not a Maxtor fan, though. As for a firewall, if you have some form of highspeed internet, then you should have one. One of the better ones is Zone Alarm, but the one that comes with WinXP SP2 will do alright. Just beware that most firewalls will alert you when a program running on your PC tries to access the Internet, but it should give you the option to let it if that's what you wanted. Anti-virus is very important!!! Pop-up blockers, not so much. If you have WinXP w/ SP2 with the latest version of IE then a pop-up blocker is built in. If your using other web-browsers then it probably has a pop-up blocker built into it as well. Microsoft seemed to stall the longest in that department.

Hope that helps, without sounding too much like a geek!