Steve,

  When the laptop comes in, here's the list I keep of what needs to happen, which you can use as a guide/checklist.  If I'm really lucky, it'll come in this week and you'll be able to deal with all this stuff before I get back on Friday morning.
  Please don't hesitate to ask me questions; I'm reading email very heavily on this trip.

thanks!

	Randy

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First, the machine has to be properly SCS facilitized.  If I have to give the machine a new name, let's call it "Taymor" (after Julie Taymor, who produced "The Lion King" on Broadway, in case you're wondering).  I presume that makes it taymor.hcii.cs.cmu.edu or taymor.etc.cmu.edu - I'm happy to have either naming in the hierarchy, so long as I can "see" things like trackers, trackers-2, infocockpits.hcii.cs.cmu.edu and so on .   Just let me know what matters on all that, since I have *no* clue!

I don't personally see any reason to carve the disk up into multiple partitions; I'm happy to have everything live in C: . Backup is a non-issue here, since facilities is going above their 20mb limit, and I and/or you will be backing up my machine, in all likelihood, anyway, since I'll be mostly on the hard-wire CMU network via the PTC facility.

I'd like the machine set up so that when I turn it on, I'm automatically logged in and don't have to type any passwords or anything.  (I presume physical security of the machine). Will that be a problem on XP?

I'd like it set up so that when I close the lid, it automatically sleeps in whatever the fastest way to sleep/wake up is.  I'd *love* to be able to hot-dock without rebooting, but I'm not holding my breath on that.

Next, the list of stuff to install would be...

Any and all Windows XP updates (including 128-bit encryption)
backup software (retrospect remote client)
whatever the recommended anti-virus software is  -- although if that can be left off, that's better; I run Norton Internet Security Family Edition that I installed myself, which gives me firewall for home plus virus protection.
MS office XP, latest versions of everything
Adobe framemaker (latest version)
Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat reader (latest versions)
latest Microsoft Visual Basic
KClient
kftp
QuickTime Pro (but please don't let it put anything in my icon tray- yuck!)
WS_FTP
Winzip
Eudora 5.1 (or latest version): my registration code is 7063-1729-6394-3969
www.real.com -> latest realplayer
latest windows media player
latest flash from Macromedia
latest director from Macromedia
emacs - which is the "best" version to use?  I've been using XEmacs 21.1.8 from www.xemacs.org
python - latest versions
from ACDsystems.com, install ACDSee32, ImageFox, and PicaView (registration information in a later email)
www.techsmith.com, install snagit32 registration code is: DA-3A-E0-06-76-7D-92-67F4 (type it in without the hyphens)

Then we need to get it to work with my printer at the office (I'll handle my home printer)

If that $199 backup thing arrives, I'd like to set it up so the backup runs each night at 4am or so, without me having to press the button.

Then, we need to get networking working, both at home and office, both wired and wireless.   

thanks *very* much for your help with all this!!!

       Randy