Last night - and this morning - I cataloged over 40 pieces of software, mostly on CDs. In the process I located the software I needed to reinstall for the CD/RW drive, and installed that this morning. I then managed to copy many many files to a CD very easily. It took about fifteen minutes to make the copy, then a bit more to verify that the files had indeed been copied. Just to be sure, I opened up one of them and took a look, and yes, there it was.

Although I have maybe 15 gigs of stuff on that drive, most of it is programs. My data files are much smaller. I may be able to get it all onto four or five CDs. I think this is great! There are some programs that I downloaded that I may want to keep on one of the CDs, the zipped or downloaded version, so I can easily reinstall those later.

The behavior of the system varies. This morning I had no difficulty getting web pages to load, but I did not try downloading anything. I am thinking that I will delete a lot of files first, then download virus definition updates and spy detection software, if it lets me. If I can get it to download successfully I will be in a kind of computer heaven, compared to what I've been through.

There is still more software to catalog, including many floppy disk programs, especially drivers. I think it's wise to add those to the list.