Questions 1-3, no. They are separate OS's and completely independent of
each other. Question 4, I would say no or yes. It doesn't seem normal,
but it would quite possibly depend on the format of the partition.

Now my question for you, Windows XP HE? What does HE stand for? I have
never heard the term before.

HE means Home Edition..............

Ubntu has inproved a whole lot since 606. I had lot of printer and cdrom
problems on 6.06. In 8.04 have not had any printer problems. Have had some
mountng problems with cdrom,but they do work alot beter.

I sure hes refering to xp home as opposed to professional.

My Ubuntu installation is separate from Windows but my experience with my
printer was the same as yours. I couldn't get it to work under 6.06 but it was
recognised immediately with 8.04. I think there have been major improvements
with both ubuntu and the CUPS/Gutenprint systems, so I don't think it's the
influence of Windows.

Unfortunately, my Dell All-in-One printer will not work whatsoever under
Linux. Really sucks BAD! But that will not deter me from continuing to
use Ubuntu.

It gets better - My digital camera, microphone and second printer all
installed dead easy.

This has to be a real challenge to Microsoft from now on. Two years
ago you had to be a bit of a geek to use linux but now it's quite easy
to set up.

No windows did not have any influence at all. Drivers for printers, cams,
video, sound, and other hardware. More manufactures are seeing more of a demand
for drivers to run their products in Linux and Unix. More companies are
switching over to Linux and Unix formates to run their servers. That is a big
push right there. Mainly it is hard to hack into the main frame of the Linux and
Unix server. If you are at work, MS mainly floats on it. What company such as
ABC Wigets want to buy printers that cannot run in Unix or Linux. That is money
lost and given to a company who supports all O/S out there. The other is people
who know coding get the hardware for free. By pleading, begging, and throgh
persisatanc and of all sorts They begian of hack into hardware from scratch.
Then share it with the open source.
Linux has gone a long ways. It improves every year. Really every six months.
The ease of using Linux and Unix is getting better with each upgrade at 6 month
intervals. MS you may get a full upgrade in several years.
Does Windows play an influence to Linux. Yes, to beat MS at their own game.
Windows does not have open source. So no one can write MS code freely and share
it with other people out there. Linux the other hand. Shares it code and people
can improve on it. Twist it up and make it do what they want to do.
This bring up to mind of a person who posted an open letter to the KDE develop
team here on this group. The thing about Linux is that once you know the code.
You can make a button to go where you want it to go. You can flex it, bend it,
mold it, and make some art out of it. With MS. If you work for MS and you make a
splashing idea. You get a pat on the back and given a gift card to Wal-Mart for
$50 bucks. Then told it is part of the job and you cannot take you clever
invention and run your own company. You are thanked by a gift card and your boss
gets a week paid vaction on who you report to who lives in India. How great is
that you get thank you via email on a person you known by emails and can fire
you for nothing.
With Linux. You get a pat on the back, others pat you on the back, and others
from a far pat you on the back. Your idea is shared through thousands of people.
You see your hard labor put to work. Do you get any money. Maybe? . Yet, you
made a history. On getting a button that pushes MS over the edge. Then MS says.
All ask in free!. And releases a open source of their O/S. If I see that happen.
I am going to wear depends for a year. Only reason why I cannot stop laughing.
To the point I will loose all body funtions.
So the people who get made at Linux and not doing what they want it to do.
First off it is free. Linux is not Windows or Mac O/S. With Linux you have a
choice on what what you want to do.
First they laugh at you then they will fight you, and then you win.

It seemed that everything worked for me -except- the wireless that is
my only link to The Internet...........

It's a long and very involved path to try to fix that. Which falls
apart several steps into the process of trying to fix the settings in
ubuntu, per the directions.

That's on new Macs....... It seems I have to have a separate, older
ex-Windows machine to use Ubuntu and be able to get On-line as well
as access my other computers.

Someday I'll try to fight my way through it again in the hopes that I
can have fully working Ubuntu/Mac/Windows computers.

WinXP partitions are usually in NTFS. I think "ntfs-3g" is supposed
to come loaded in Ubuntu, but only the configuration shows in the
add/remove. I had to go to their main site (ntfs-3g.org) and
download the package(s) for Debian. It lets me recognize my main
windows drive when dual-booting into Ubuntu. I don't mount that one,
but it's useful for mounting my external drive that's in NTFS.

My hdd has the 2 windows partitions (pri), 1 Ubuntu for the root
(pri). The "/home" and swap are in separate logical partitions, along
with a FAT32 logical partition to share files between the two OS's
(shows up as another hdd in windows). I had shrunk my win partition
during the back-up/clone process before installing Ubuntu Studio. I
chose the "manual" partitioning during the install process.