Well, here I am getting used to Windows XP -- only 6 years after everyone else!
I finally got tired of 'preparing' and just made the switch last night. Any 'personal computer' is a moving target of course. You can never have everything just right. But thanks to all the preparation I am getting programs and data moved over very quickly. But it did keep me up into the wee hours.
In a few more days I expect to finally install Linux on the reserved partition.