guess who reads your blatherings lol.
know what you mean about the 'wonderfuly exciting life'... most exciting thing iv done lately is buy a rose bush.
whats wrong with your old comp? if you can still get it to show you your old files then you can probably download them to a portable harddrive like i did. or i know they make a cable to connect the two together and transfer stuff with a prog that comes with the cable.
as for the google browser, just ignore it and go download firefox again. www.mozilla.com/firefox/
i have win 7 but my sisters vista looks similar, maybe i can help with some of your setting up? email me info on what all you need set up and ill try to figure it out.