HP Media Center PC

My frankenstien linux PC konked out in the middle of compiling stuff for work. I did some price checking and found PC on Dell w/what I wanted for $1100. P4 3GHz dual core. Checked circuit city and found same PC same price by HP, only with XP Media Center, photo crap, TV tuner card, dual dvd w/light scribe....blah blah blah, maybe someday I'll try to get half that stuff to work on linux, but it's not costing me anything and I get to pick-up computer now...gone to manchester, nh.

Take it home, dvd burner can't burn iso disk images w/o third party software. I'm going to have to go on the internet and download a special program.... I... I... may get one of those windows viruses and my pc will slow down to a halt.... oh well, windows will be gone soon...

ok, let me at least play with all these doodads before I wipe out windows... hmmm... you know I can do work stuff in windows and I can see what windows has been up to since '95...

Spent 30 minutes wondering why
set PATH=%PATH%;c:\java\bin
wasn't working. Apparently there are 2 different DOS shells, cmd.exe and command.exe. Command.exe is ancient useless program...I should have been using cmd.exe. oh man, I'm in trouble.