I am in the market for a new Windows computer, but I prefer the Windows XP operating system, not Vista. I understand Microsoft has now barred the major PC vendors from selling XP systems. Is there a way I can get around this?

If you want a new, brand-name PC that comes pre-loaded with the seven-year-old Windows XP operating system, you can still get one through an odd and circuitous process. Most major PC makers will sell you selected Vista models with an option, which sometimes costs extra, officially called a “downgrade,” but sometimes marketed as an “upgrade” or “bonus.” You may have to hunt through the selections offered by the computer makers to find one that has this XP option.

When you order a PC in this fashion, you are technically buying a Vista machine, and Microsoft counts it as a Vista sale. But the computer company actually loads XP on the new hardware, in place of Vista, before it leaves the factory. In many cases, you also get discs containing Vista, in the event you wish to switch to the newer Vista operating system later.

I was wondering if you could give me some suggestions of a small, light portable radio-type gadget with earbuds that would be good for me while I do athletic activities like riding my bike. I want something that will give me different pre-programmed selections of music, not something that I have to load with music (I don’t remember names of songs). I love my Sirius satellite radio in my car.

My first reaction is to suggest you simply get the portable, small, personal Sirius radio that is meant for carrying on your person. It’s called the Stiletto 2 and costs around $300. Like the one in your car, it does require a subscription, but it is much smaller. I haven’t tested it, but you can get more information at sirius.com.

However, this unit isn’t in the smallest class of portable music players, so another alternative might be to get a very small portable player, which, while it allows you to download music, also has a built-in FM radio. Among these is the smallest Microsoft Zune, called the Zune 4 GB, at about $100, and the Sansa Clip, starting at about $35. Neither requires a subscription fee. Information is at zune.com and sansa.com.

The popular Rhapsody subscription music service is also available on portable players, and offers pre-programmed channels of music. Some of these players also include FM radios. Information on these is at learn.rhapsody.com/devices.

Last week, you said you didn’t know of a dedicated gadget that simply allows people to both send and receive emails. What about the MailBug?

Thanks for reminding me. The MailBug, which I haven’t tested, is a small, text-only terminal for sending and receiving email over a dial-up connection. It costs about $125 and requires a companion email service that is about $100 a year. It’s made by a company called Landel and can be ordered at mailbug.com.

While the device itself can’t send or receive photos or other nontext attachments, account holders with access to a computer can view such attachments via a Web-based version of their email accounts.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Here are a few questions about computers I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability. This week my mailbox contained questions about using an iPhone overseas for data purposes, running Microsoft Office 2000 on Vista and using broadband-provider email in two locations.

You recently wrote that iPhone owners using the device overseas must roam on AT&T at high rates, because the iPhone won’t work with SIM cards from foreign carriers. You noted that AT&T has a monthly plan that cuts these per-call voice rates somewhat. But what are the options for using an iPhone overseas for data purposes, such as email and Internet browsing?

Until Apple initiates iPhone service with foreign carriers, which is expected to be a gradual process that will begin in Europe, iPhone owners traveling abroad will be forced to roam on AT&T and to pay through the nose for data as well as voice calls made over cellular-phone networks. They won’t be able to buy cheaper service from a local foreign carrier and enable it by simply replacing the phone’s AT&T SIM card with the local carrier’s.

In addition, it is important to note that, even if you are willing to swallow these huge voice-and-data rates, you must call AT&T (formerly Cingular) before you leave the U.S. with your iPhone (or any AT&T phone) to modify, or “provision,” your calling plan so it will even work overseas.

Here are the details. Note that these prices and plans apply to many other phones AT&T sells, not just the iPhone.

To recap the voice-calling situation, AT&T charges very high fees, which can be mitigated a bit by adding a special $5.99 monthly add-on feature, called AT&T World Traveler, to their plans. This voice feature allows you to roam in 190 countries and gives you discounts on calls from 80 countries. For instance, in France, Italy, Germany, and Britain, you pay a still-high 99 cents a minute, compared with an even worse $1.29 without the plan. In Hong Kong or Israel, you pay a whopping $1.99 a minute, instead of an even more outrageous $2.29 or $2.49, respectively, a minute.

For email and the Web, the best bet for iPhone owners is to avoid using cellular networks and employ the phone’s Wi-Fi capability, which can cost nothing extra. Try to find a free or reasonably priced Wi-Fi hot spot in which to check email and do Web browsing. You may even be able to make cheap voice calls this way using Internet-based calling services like JaJah (mobile.jajah.com) which, in my domestic tests, worked properly via the iPhone’s Web browser.

However, if you need to check email constantly or frequently, you are unlikely to be able to depend solely on the Wi-Fi method. You can rely on AT&T roaming to do this over foreign cellular services, but, as with the voice call situation, it will cost a fortune.

AT&T offers an add-on plan for $24.99 a month, called the “PDA/Smartphone/iPhone International Data Plan.” This is on top of the $5.99-a-month voice plan, and is also additive to the $20 a month for unlimited data when in the U.S. that is built into your base plan. But it isn’t unlimited. You get only 20 megabytes of overseas data use a month, and pay a stiff $.005 a kilobyte for all data use above that.

Plus, this international-data plan only works in 29 countries. Outside those countries, the cost is an astounding $.0195 a kilobyte, or roughly $20 a megabyte. To put that in perspective, a single email with a medium-resolution picture attached could amount to a megabyte. More information is at www.att.com/wirelessinternational.

One more note: apparently AT&T can and will cancel your roaming service overseas if it notices what it considers an unusually high number of calls being made. One reader with an iPhone reported that, after arranging belatedly in Europe to get the voice-roaming service, he was suddenly cut off when he reached India, with AT&T explaining the cutoff as an attempt to prevent suspected fraud.

According to this reader, AT&T said he had been cut off “because there were ‘too many calls from India and other countries’ and they did not think it was possible anyone could be doing that for real, so to protect me, they cancelled the service.” An AT&T spokesman says the company can’t comment on the details of this particular case without knowing the traveler’s phone number.

You say Office 2003 runs OK on Windows Vista. I have been using Office 2000 and it does everything I need. Will it also run OK on Vista?

Microsoft doesn’t officially support Office 2000 on Vista. It may work, but I haven’t tested it.

Is there a way that I can use my same email address both at my home in New Jersey and at my winter place in Florida, even though I have broadband Internet service in New Jersey but am limited to dial-up Internet access from a different provider in Florida?

Some broadband providers also make available a supplementary dial-up service for their customers, which may be free or cost extra. Check with your broadband service to see if it offers this option.

If not, you could simply use an email account that isn’t necessarily tied to an access provider at all, such as Web-based email services from Yahoo, Google or Microsoft. You could switch to one of these permanently, and use it in both locations, or you can forward your main email address to one of them while you are in Florida. People who send you email wouldn’t have to learn a new address and many Web-based services allow you to set your main address as the “reply-to” address for emails you send.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com

Here are a few questions about computers I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability. This week my mailbox contained questions about getting viruses from file-swapping services, other options beyond dial-up Internet access, and buying a Mac desktop computer.

If you have a question, send it to me at mossberg@wsj.com, and I may select it to be answered here in Mossberg’s Mailbox.

Are there problems with using file-swapping sites like Kazaa, as long as you have a good antivirus protection program? I don’t mind paying for individual songs, but other sites like iTunes or Rhapsody often don’t have the songs I want.

Yes, there are problems. The first are the ethical and legal issues arising from obtaining somebody else’s copyrighted intellectual property without paying for it, from a person who isn’t licensed or authorized to distribute it. The other sites you mention, iTunes and Rhapsody, are legally licensed to distribute music. Kazaa and its ilk aren’t, nor are the people who make music available through them. Your argument is like rationalizing buying stolen TVs because your local Best Buy didn’t have the model you wanted.

If your conscience can get past that, there are practical issues. These sites are major transmitters not only of viruses, but of spyware, which your antivirus program can’t stop. Even if your PC has a full, up-to-date security suite, with antispyware software, you are asking for trouble by downloading from “file swapping” sites. Many of the people I hear from who have had to take drastic, costly steps to save heavily infected PCs attribute their problems to the fact that their kids were frequenting file-sharing sites.

I currently have dial-up access to the Internet, which is slow. I pay a total of $35-$40 a month for the Internet service itself, plus a dedicated phone line. I see ads that claim I can give up this dial-up service and the extra phone line and somehow get higher-speed Internet access for less. Is this true? I do not have a cellphone or wireless service into my house, though I do have cable TV.

You can definitely save a lot of money on your Internet service, and drastically increase speed at the same time. And you don’t need cellphone or wireless service at all. They are irrelevant. Your choices are DSL from your phone company, or cable-modem service from your cable TV provider. Either will give you a high-speed broadband connection that is much, much faster than your current dial-up service — without tying up your phone line. You can go down to a single phone line for making voice calls.

DSL tends to be a lot cheaper, so I recommend DSL if you want to save money. And, while the low-priced DSL service is a lot slower than a cable modem, it is much cheaper and still is roughly 15 times as fast as your current connection.

Verizon offers a low-end DSL service for $14.95 a month, with the first month free. It’s much faster than what you have now, and you wouldn’t need the second phone line. Other companies may have similar offers. But you should go to your phone company’s DSL Web site first to see if your house qualifies for DSL. Not all homes do; it depends on how far you live from the nearest phone company facility.

I am a Windows user who wants to switch to Mac, and I have found two options suitable for me. The first option is to buy the $1,299 iMac G5. And the second option is to buy the Mac mini with the 1.42 GHz processor, 1 GB of memory and a 100 GB hard drive.

It all depends on what you do on your computer and on what your plans are. The mini, configured as you specify, will cost you $500 less than the iMac. But it is less powerful and less full-featured than the iMac. And it lacks a monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers, all of which come with the iMac. If you have all of these on your Windows PC, and like them, and don’t plan to keep the Windows PC, you can switch them over to the mini. But you’ll still have to buy a peripheral called a USB hub, because the mini has too few ports. If you want to preserve your Windows machine, you’ll have to buy new peripherals, or a gadget called a KVM that allows the mini and your Windows machine to share the peripherals.

The iMac G5, in my view, is the best consumer desktop on the market, and the $1,299 model has just been upgraded, without a price increase. So, if your computing needs are modest, your budget is limited and you’re ready and willing to switch over your Windows peripherals, the mini would be a better bargain. But the iMac is the better computer.

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Because of the volume of e-mail I receive, I can’t routinely answer individual questions by e-mail, or consult on individual problems or purchasing decisions. I read all questions I receive and select three each week to answer in the column.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com