Our IT dept wasn't too keen on me resurrecting the Dead Dell into a new post physical existence on my MacBook. What I think I'll do is having a go at virtualising the Vista laptop that I bought as a temporary measure while I was out there, more as a learning exercise than anything else....

Luckily, they do think they can get the data off the disk so at least I'll have that for some proper continuity when I travel back out to my customer in January.