Can anybody help with all of this please – or direct me to some handy links?

The hard disk of my HP PC failed and it was too expensive for the supplier to repair it under warranty so they offered me a new HP PC (model 9570a) with better specs than the old one had. I don’t know what these details of the Vista PC mean but here they are:

Processor : Intel (R) Core (TM)2 Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20Ghz
Memory (RAM) : 2.00 GB
System type : 32-bit Operating System

The trouble is that it comes bundled with with Vista (Home Premium with Service Pack 1) and Microsoft Works and my old one was bundled with XP and other GOODIES such as Word and Excel.

From my XP PC I have:

-Back up of all my files including program files in MyBook
-A recovery disk with the factory settings

What I would LIKE to do is to be able to use both XP and Vista on my new PC and with XP to have a fresh reinstall from the recovery disk since my XP was GETTING buggy anyway.

I’d like to keep using XP for documents but move my video files over to Vista as my old Media Centre didn’t work anymore and the Vista version looks as if it has more bells and whistles anyway.

Naturally I don’t want to pay for another copy of XP.

If that is not going to work then at least I would have to move all my video, music, Word and Excel files from MyBook over to be used in Microsoft Works. And how would I be able to duplicate all my Firefox settings?

Thanks – I’m not very geekish so I won’t be able to understand too much TECHNICAL stuff.