honey and sting

... many chapters later, and still don't have the final word on the recoverability of my hard drive. But in the meantime, I have two partial back-ups. Unfortunately, both are in file formats that my new laptop, an IBM Thinkpad, can't read. One is in pst files (emails from the work computer in Outlook, not Outlook Express), and the other is in dbx files. Does anyone know a) where I can get a reasonably priced copy of Outlook (and MS Word, which the IBM did not come with)? Official pricing for MS Office, which includes those 2, is in the $500 range. I looked up versions on Amazon that sounded good, except for the consumer reviews which said they were upgrades, not starter versions. And b), what are dbx files and how can I convince my computer to open them?

Also, if you ever got a poem from me in an email, and still have it, send it to me please? I think I have most of mine recovered, but at this point redundancy is a good thing.