This gets more interesting the more I read. Can I ask Guitarfxr in relation to your comment about installing an external cdrw drive on a mac - are you saying that using the Mac DVD drive for music is damaging to it or are you saying that it is just wasted being used for anything other than dvd? Hope this is not a silly question - it's just that I have an Imac and wouldn't want to be doing anything detrimental to it. Not that i've used a tenth of its potential so far. By the way I loaded xp onto the imac using boot camp. Partitioning was an absolute breeze using boot camp - but I still held my breath while waiting for that windows logo to come up when I loaded xp. Haven't used xp on the mac yet - well you wouldn't unless you HAD to would you? But I will once I get around to loading SS. I'm thinking that as my drive is partitioned boot camp style I will be able to upload legacy mds via SS and simply drag and drop them to the mac side of things. Thanks for all the info by the way.