Pete, Not a response to your subject inquiry but looking at the final points in your post. You say you have limited RAM so I'm presuming 64 or 128. Migration upwards in AOL would probably be unsuccessful - although I don't remember at which version there'd be a disconnect for you. I started w/ v. 4.0 in a machine w/ 192 RAM, 20g memory and 56k modem. I migrated to v. 5 w/o incident and perhaps to v. 6.0 but then problems began. As a former programmer - old school, at that - you'll comprehend when I say AOL finally said the new version was written on a basis of a 256 platform of RAM, instead of the 64 used for previous versions. It would load slowly and some things would work but others wouldn't; it was selectively loading elements etc to fit the resources I provided. I backed down a version and all went well until the computer itself died. [But there were similar problems with applications as they were revised. 'On-line banking', which I rely on - has given me fits this way. And Bank of America continued the phenomenon when they merged Fleet accounts as the BofA system was written with broadband in mind and, like yourself, I still use dial-up. The BofA system is S L O W and I frequently can't navigate within it because of the parameters my laptop provides. It seems they never thought about the interface with dial-up customers nor do they care, which they've made very obvious. When I sell my condo in CT in a few months, I'll close the BofA account in protest. Hate to lose the 'account relationship' since '79 - with a predecessor bank - but it's the only way of protest left.] My new system has 1 gig RAM and 80 storage so my capacity problems are not a concern now. [I've noticed more and more applications are advertised as '256 RAM required/512 recommended', though.] So I migrated to AOL v.9.0 and hated it. Tried to move back, against AOL's wishes, when they issued 'v.9 Security Edition' and I tried it and it's fine so far - not that I use all the bells and whistles. My old system, as yours, had Win 98 SE and the new one has XP Pro, which is overkill but enables everything. Which leads me to my point: MS has announced it is ending support of Win 98. Hence, you need to guard against enforced obsolescence. Whatever you do to extend your files etc will have to be conservatively done. And new PCs mostly don't have 'floppy drives' anymore! So everybody who used them for backup face a hard time now. Jack .