Thanks to everyone for the great advice. I am seriously considering spending around $600 on Lenovo with Win 7 Pro (64 bit) and XP Mode already installed (available through their web site). But the temptation of using this as an excuse to buy the Macbook Air (about double the price) I've been hankering after is strong. I've switched to Mac for just about everything else. What's stopping me, in addition to cost, is the issue of loading XP onto Parallels, as I don't have an XP disk.
Probably the Lenovo is the best bet.
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x131e-intel/If I'm just running XY in XP mode on the Lenovo, plus probably some web surfing and drop-box, can I get away with just 4G of memory?
And, Harry, yes, I was using dropbox before the wireless on my Thinkpad died. Now I'm
using a flash drive. But the Thinkpad USB ports have begun to show signs of deterioration. I need to get a replacement soon.
Microsoft's offerings of multiple flavors of Win 7 are a major annoyance, and an incentive to get away from their OS once and for all.
From: Harry Binswanger
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, February 9, 2014 11:39 AM
Subject: Re: Win 8 v. Win 7
Lisa,
Kari wrote:
That's the solution I use. The 32-bit Win 7 is not that different from XP,
and even has a few advantages.