replacing old PC

HI,I see we are getting close to end of life for WINXP and have been thinking about replacing my current PC with a newer PC and this is my idea on how to do it.

I have WD external HDD that i have been using to back up the 2 PC'S that are being used in this house,also i have been backing up the IDE HDD to same external HDD so everything is on the external HDD.

Now would i be right that i can download everything off of the external HDD to the new PC and possibly put some partitions in place for each of the HDD'S that will be on it and if i download all that is on it the WINXP OS'S system's will not go with it and the OS will be what ever OS that i choose to use.

I bought a usb drive to download some malware and anti-virus programs so would it be a good idea to update those programs on the USB before i transfer all

that i can and put those programs on new PC before i hook it up to the internet,is my thinking going in the right direction.

The PC i am using right now is a DELL E521,WINXP,SP3,4GIGS RAM,3.0Mhz,GT610 GPU,but with the prices of PC'S as low as they are right now i think i will be ahead of the game by replacing it with better PC and transferring all that i can to new PC,thank you

 

with a beast like that why eplace the hardware?.. crunchbang or any other linux will work an absolute treat on it.. in fact from this recycled 1.3g 800mb junker I'm jealous..