Sorted.

The final steps were relatively easy.

I got the 1 TB external HD working on the old XP machine (just unplugged the power and USB connection, powered it up again, reconnected to old machine via USB and viola... I'd done this in the past and it didn't work). Transfer from the old XP machine to the HD took quite long (maybe 1-2 hours, weehee Jamesons). Connection of the drive to the new machine was simple and painless. Many many restarts and shutdown/restarts of new machine powered up the HD immediately and it was immediately available for access. Notably, transfer of the files off the HD on to the new machine was fast (less than appx. 20 minutes). I recall earlier comments re: USB 1.1 v. 2.0. I don't ask questions as it worked, and that's enough.

Printer fax copier scanner setup went fine. No issues there. Software installed correctly. A number of configuration settings (mostly file format, dpi, save-to-location settings) was a bit of a chore. But, it all worked.

And, finally, the second monitor connection also went flawlessly. Sr. loves that portion of the setup. Comments ranged from "cool" to "this'll really help." He's not a day trader, gamer or anything. He is just floored by the fact that he can have Firefox running on one screen while Outlook is running on the other. It is, after all, the little things that matter.

On the outlook transfer, he was somewhat miffed about the "autofill" email addresses not carrying over. But, he corresponds with a small number of folks. So, I sent a "test" email to all of them so that's all back there without a needed file transfer.

Re-reading my earlier post, I note I used the words "patched together" for some proposed antivirus/antispyware/etc solutions/alternatives to Norton. That's a poor word choice. I realize that all are great solutions (after all, I would not call the Mozilla suite of programs "patched together"). Indeed, if this were my machine, I would have skipped Norton altogether (although Sr. got it for free or nearly nothing with his purchase) and gone with the proposed options The final decision on Norton (perhaps as LIH Prem suggested), is that it just did not seem over intrusive, speed/performance hog, whatever that I had feared. Perhaps others who do more with their systems than Sr. does experience issues that I / he will not.

In the end, it went very well. And, though I think I had a good roadmap when I started this thread, ALL of you were particularly helpful and I truly appreciate it. Without able assistance such as this, I don't think it would have gone so smoothly.

I'd like to separately plug something totally unrelated - Evernote. Before heading off, I had read about it in the Times, WSJ, somewhere... Over the weekend, I gave it a try and loved it. As I set things up, I had my Mac laptop at the side to take notes of new settings, passwords, login info, etc. Nifty feature is the picture-to-note feature. Very helpful. And, it organized everything so I have it at hand wherever (Evernote has web, desktop and handheld access) whenever I get a call about something not working.