New PC

A few weeks ago when our tax refund showed up, I purchased/ordered a new PC. This is to replace the one that was being used by the kids and Elise for school and such. The old PC, even after I basically updated all the hardware, never worked quite right. Since we have no big-box electronics stores, nor even a hole-in-the-wall part-time computer supplier, the only choice is to order in. Shipping to Petersburg is always a major purchase decision factor. HP was offering free shipping, so that kind of sealed the deal.

The PC is the lower end of what is currently available, though I bumped up the memory to 2GB so that even with shared video memory, there will be sufficient left for Vista to work with. Otherwise, the whole PC measures about the size of a family Bible or a large 3-inch 3-ring binder filled with paper.

It arrived earlier in the week, but I only started the setup process yesterday. I spent much of the afternoon and the evening trying to get the files and settings from the old computer transferred over. Windows Easy Transfer my #%&@! There was nothing easy about it. The network based transfer failed three times, the USB drive transfer failed twice, and the final solution to create the transfer file on the old PC and then use file sharing to transfer was about 90% successful. There were a number of files which for some reason would not transfer. I had to finally resort to Microsoft's SyncToy to synchronize all of the document folders between the old and new.

I think everything is pretty much ready to be opened up to use by the family. I need to move the PC downstairs, and then move the old PC elsewhere so that I can try to figure out why it's been so unreliable. I think there is some sort of hardware and software conflict, perhaps with the hard drives.