Randolph Aero is back. I did a full defrag and am using the new Diskeeper intelligent defragger, and it has made the computer much more responsive. If Aero bugs me, it's gone though. I found the Vista Basic interface to be reasonable enough, so it is an adequate replacement to Aero if necessary. The biggest issue I have is when my typing takes too long to appear on screen. Waiting half a second every sentence is annoying as hell.
GoldWave is installed and running.
MP3Gain is installed and running.
MusicMatch (which I believe does NOT work) is currently downloading. I only use it to do fast conversions of music files, so that part should work.
My first assignment, due for 25 March, is also done. In Word 2007. Scary stuff.
[EDIT 18-03-2007] MusicMatch works fine for what I need.