Like tomtuttle has said, you guys are my best tech support. Thanks in advance.

I've been using a Dell desktop since 2004, WinXP SP3, and my wife has a MacBook, c.2009 running Snow Leopard (10.6.8). The Dell seems on its last legs, and I'm not sure I need to replace it if I can use the Macbook and if it will have a decent lifespan remaining. Gail has foregone the MacBook for an iPad 2, so looks like WAF-wise, it's a go.

My goal is to learn iPhoto/iMovie to finally get off my butt and archive our digital photos and movie clips from the last several years, i.e. burn them to CD/DVD, pick ones to print at Costco. We are living that old TV commercial where the photos are trapped on the SD cards, just sitting there for months and years on end. I also want to get all our music files in one place and rip the remainder of the CD collection. Most of it was ripped years ago to the Dell.

I bought a 1 TB hard drive (Silicon Power A60) to back up her Mac, which has only a 160 GB hard drive which is 2/3 full.

I have many photos and mp3s on the Dell that I'd like to move to the Mac, where my iPhone is synced. Just got a 128GB iPhone 6 plus that should hold all my music. I know that everything won't fit on the Mac at once, so I imagine shuffling files between Mac and external HD.

I've begun searching online for ways to get PC files to the Mac, but I figured it best to go with trusted help from you guys.

Any suggestions/links/funny cat pictures are appreciated.

Macs and cats.

Sabotaged by Mark again. I'll get you, you'll see.

I love my iPad and I sincerely tried to use a Mac at home for a while. I couldn't do it.

Good luck. Have fun.

if you are looking to get the data from your Dell to the macbook. The best way possible is to take a screwdriver and remove the hard disk from the dell.

now, you have to look at the hard connector as 2004, they were most likely still using the older IDE drives and not the newer SATA that is the standard.

Go to your local computer store and pick up a USB2 to IDE external 3 1/2" case and put the hard drive inside of it. Plug it into your mac and simply copy all the data that you want off the drive.

Aw maaan. I thought you were going to stabity, stabity, stab the Mac.

I forgot to say thanks, Matt. I may try that if I get brave.

If the computer is still working, you could as well for ZERO dollars cost, just turn on File Sharing for the whole drive, and copy everything over the network.