Gettin' a Dell

The Compaq I bought in 1997 has slowly been eating itself: floppy drive has been awol for awhile now, only one USB port works, Norton has disappeared and I can't get it to reinstall, things that I think should be there are gone. We got a pretty good milk check this month (it happens occasionally) and last night I bought a Dell Dimension 2400 with a 256 mg memory, 80GB hard drive and CD-RW, no floppy. I told them I needed it under $600 and we almost did it - $609. with the rebate. When I think about the Mac Classic costing $2200 with a 4 MB harddrive I just have to shake my head.

Ok, now the questions. I'm using Win 98 - the oringinal, not the second edition - I assume I'm in for some system shock. Any info would help. I'm also concerned that my programs pre XP will work, will they????

I'm going to try and keep the new computer fairly free of programming - this one has so much junk in it and it won't let me delete anything any more. What are the things you would put in? IE-OE comes with it, should I think about downloading something else? I have Adobe Photoshop Elements and a really old Print Shop. the Adobe will load, will I be able to use the Print Shop (v.5)? Or is the Serif Graphics with Page plus 5.0, Draw Plus 3.0, GraphicsPlus, 3D plus a better idea?

I'm having minor second thoughts - the devil you know, etc. But I don't think even a total restore would work with this. And I'm thinking of donating the Compaq to someplace - any ideas on that?

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

lol, thanks for any help.