I have Firefox on my home laptop, but Internet Explorer on my office laptop. Can I transfer my Firefox bookmarks on my home computer to IE on my office computer using the Foxmarks bookmark-synchronization service you recommended? And how would I go about doing it?

Yes. You start by uploading your bookmarks from Firefox at home to your Foxmarks Web account, using the Firefox version of Foxmarks. That will establish the bookmark collection on the Web site as identical to your Firefox collection. Then, you install the IE version of Foxmarks on your office computer, and, when it prompts you to sync, you can either merge the Web-based bookmarks you previously uploaded from Firefox with the ones already on IE, or choose the option to overwrite the IE bookmarks entirely with the ones online.

Does the Foxmarks service work with AOL’s browser bookmarks?

AOL’s browser is not supported. Neither are some other browsers, such as Opera or Google’s Chrome. Foxmarks currently comes in versions only for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (Mac version only). The Firefox version also works with Flock, which is a browser heavily based on Firefox.

Do you have any idea what the realistic hardware requirements will be to run Windows 7?

Microsoft hasn’t announced these yet. But the requirements for the current beta version are likely to be similar to those for the final release. The beta hardware requirements are: a 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor; 1 GB of system memory; 16 GB of available disk space; support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory available for graphics; and a DVD-R/W Drive.

In the past, Microsoft’s minimum requirements have tended to understate what’s needed to run Windows well, even when doing typical tasks. It’s too early to say if this will be true of Windows 7. But I can say that, in my testing so far, the beta of Windows 7 runs much more quickly and smoothly than Vista on the same hardware.

• 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.

If I buy a PC with an AMD processor instead of an Intel one, will I run into any compatibility issues with common software like Vista or Office 2007?

No, as long as the AMD processor, and/or its accompanying graphics and other chips, called a “chip set,” are rated as being able to handle the graphics in the version of Vista you are buying. Each chip company makes some low-end models that handle certain tasks more slowly than their mainstream or top-of-line models. And gamers are often particular about which chip sets they buy. But, in my experience, roughly comparable AMD and Intel processors and chip sets are equally compatible with common software like Office and Windows.

I have been using the Netscape Web browser for years. I am interested in shifting to using the Firefox browser. How do I transfer my extensive list of book marks from Netscape to Firefox?

Firefox will import your Netscape bookmarks automatically during the installation process, just as it can automatically import bookmarks from other browsers like Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera.

Friends who use Macs tell me they have a removable backup device that backs up their entire hard drive, including programs. Is there something similar for PCs?

You appear to be referring to Time Capsule, which is an Apple hardware product that combines a hard disk and a wireless base station and is meant to work with the Mac’s built-in Time Machine automated backup feature. The answer is that there are many backup drives for Windows PCs, and that lots of them work with Macs as well. All the major hard-disk makers sell external hard disks that connect to a PC either directly, or over a network, and which come with relatively simple backup programs. Some of these programs will do complete, automated backups of everything on your PC, including applications. Even Apple’s Time Capsule can be used to back up files from Windows PCs, though it doesn’t come with Windows backup software, and setting it up for Windows is slightly trickier than doing so on a Mac.

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

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.

In last week’s column, you covered Web browsers that featured tabbed browsing and the ability to read syndicated news feeds. But you omitted the Opera browser, which has had these features for awhile. Why did you leave out Opera? Do you hate it?

Not at all. It was mainly a space issue — I didn’t have room in the column to delve into every browser. Opera, which runs on Windows, Macintosh and Linux, is a very good, speedy, full-featured Web browser that pioneered many of the key features of newer browsers like Firefox and Safari.

In the past, I have felt that Opera suffered from an overly complicated user interface, and that it was aimed more at techies and tinkerers than at the mainstream, nontechie users who are my main audience. But the latest version, Opera 8 — available for Windows and Linux and coming soon for the Mac — has a much cleaner look and feel and hides most of the options that might overwhelm average users. The new version also features a security-notification system that helps users judge whether a financial site is genuine or a possible scam; and an impressive ability to resize Web pages to fit screens of almost any size without scrambling the page layout.

In my limited tests, Opera 8 looks very good. The only downside of Opera is that, unlike Firefox, it isn’t exactly free. There is a no-charge version, but it displays ads in its toolbar. To get a version without ads, you have to pay $39.

I have pictures taken with a three- and four-megapixel camera. How do I easily email them without having to reduce the size of each picture?

In Windows XP, just go to the folder where the picture files are stored and select the ones you want to email. Then, either click on “E-mail the selected items” from the command list on the left of the window, or the “Send To” command on the File menu at the top of the window, or on the menu that pops up when you right-click on the file icons. You will be given a choice of making the pictures smaller, or emailing them at their original size.

On the Macintosh, the easiest way to do this is in the iPhoto program, which comes with every Mac. You just select the pictures you want to email, click the Email icon, and the program will give you a choice of sending the picture at its original size, or at a variety of smaller sizes.

I am trying to decide between purchasing an IBM ThinkPad and an Apple PowerBook. In order to do a realistic price comparison, I am wondering if there is a suite of music, photo and video editing software, on par with Apple’s iLife suite, that you would recommend for the ThinkPad.

I don’t know of a multimedia suite for Windows (handling photos, music, videos and DVD authoring) that is anywhere near as well integrated and easy to use as the iLife suite that Apple includes with all new Macs. There are individual programs, some of them free, that do parts of the job, such as Picasa or Adobe Photoshop Album for photos. But, in a complete suite, the closest candidate on Windows is probably Roxio Easy Media Creator, which sells for about $85.

Why isn’t there an “RSS” news feed that would allow users to read summaries of your columns in news reader software?

There is such a feed of my three weekly columns, as well as feeds for other articles from The Wall Street Journal. All use the RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, system and can be viewed from most news-reader programs and Web browsers that support the RSS standard.

In addition to the feed for my columns, there are feeds available for Journal news and business headlines, the paper’s editorials and its technology stories. These feeds of headlines and story summaries are available free to anyone, but the actual stories behind them are viewable only by readers who have a paid subscription. There is one exception: a news feed for a selection of free stories made available each day.

To get the Journal’s RSS feeds, go to wsj.com, and click on the entry called “RSS Feeds” toward the bottom of the menu at the left of the home page. Or, to get the feed for my column, just paste the following address into a news reader or RSS-capable Web browser: online.wsj.com/xml/rss/0,, 3_7071,00.xml. To get the feed for each day’s free stories, paste in this address: online.wsj.com/xml/rss/0,,3_7077,00.xml.

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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