Thanks for the quick response! :)

MS Windows XP Pro SP3
HP Compaq dc7800 x86based pc
2 gig ram
60 gig ss hd with separate data drive

Would like best option for continued use of these Windows programs:

Office 2010
Roxio Creator 2012 Pro
Bibleworks 8

Xp allows me to toggle between an English and Hebrew keyboards for data entry.

Would prefer not to have a dual boot system, if possible!

HP Compaq Presario Media Center 2005
32 bit AMD 2100 mhz 2 gig ram boot drive is 80 gig IDE
We used CapWiz for copying our dvds to data drive (got tired of digging thru boxes to find the movie we wanted to watch lol
most of our files are .mpg we watched on windows media player. Can linus read them? IF so how! What linux apps would be best to replace recording and viewing tasks. WIll we need to convert our NTFS data files?

We do have other hard drives we could use: sata 40g or sata 80g

Have one computer that has a now unusable XP Windows Media Center 2005 OS. Drive still good but all OS/data was lost. Would like to convert this to Linux for pictures and watching videos. I think all I need is a Ubuntu start up disk to load on the hard drive. Would there be anything else I would need to download?

If this works out I may convert my new computer with XP Pro to Ubuntu Linux and Wine to run my Windows programs that I don't want to give up yet: Word 2010, Bibleworks 8 and Roxio Creator 2012. At present my computer allows me to toggle between two keyboards, English and Hebrew. Would this feature available to me?

Fed up with the Windows ... have a dead computer that used to run XP Media Center 2005 ... Want to put Linux on it. Just paid a small fortune for Office 2010 and Bibleworks 8. What should I download with Linux so I can use them for something other than a paperweight? Please, anyone HELP me because...