in a related vein: work gave me an allowance to buy myself a laptop. got a dell, and through a promotion i ended up with some cash-back/store credit. it wasn't much, so i got a BT mouse and a USB CD/DVD writer. i realized that currently, the only way that i can play and read CDs and DVDs is the DVD player connected to the basement TV. i do have a desktop that i built almost 20 years ago (runs WinXP!) that i could fire up if needed, but would be easier to plug in a USB device should the need arise. time to transfer everything off of DVDs and on to backup drives...