Oh, yeah, I forgot. Today’s the day I convert over to my new machine. Eek.
In some ways, the process is not as terrifying as all that. After all, last spring I had to reload my machine, ah, several times.
But one change this time around is that it’s a whole new manufacturer. I’m converting from my beloved — well, at least familiar — Compaq Armada E500 notebook to a new IBM Thinkpad A31.
Observations:
- IBM’s monitor stand and docking station arrangement sucks. The stand is a good 30% wider than on the Compaq. It appears to be generic for all notebooks, so the docking station beneath it just sort of sits in the stand, on a tray. Yeah, because you have to pull out the track to really seat the IBM notebook in the replicator, downwards (vs just sliding the Compaq into the replicator). Advantage: Compaq.
- Moving PCs is a pain in the ass. Really.
- The File & Settings Transfer Wizard that Windows now has on it looks like it might be helpful. Or it might horribly frell my machine. We’ll see. Hmmm. Looks like it backs up OE files, even though it’s just on “Settings” mode. Would have had it serial over the files, if (dammit) I could find a direct cable to do it with. Oddly enough, nobody around here has serial cables any more.
- Saving all your program downloads in their own directory will always a good thing, if you’ve got the disk space for it.
- Managed to get my new machine viewing the drive of my old machine. That’s helping.
- The Settings transfer seems to have gone off okay. Hmmm.
- Things seem to get more complicated with synchronization types of functions. For example, I have a Palm Pilot. At some point, I have to install the software on the new PC, make sure that the HotSync instructions are correct, and, ultimately, press the button and hope that the whole thing doesn’t erase my lifetime. Eep!
- It didn’t. So far as I can tell.
- Outlook Express ported over, but the messages within the folders didn’t. The restore via ExpressAssist seems to run, but it creates a flat folder structure and still no messages. Uh … eep?
Okay, the restore is working, but OE still doesn’t see the messages (even though the dbx files are of the appropriate size). Urk.
28 view(s)
UPDATE:
About thirty minutes later of retries, finally discovered in the BIOS that the hard drive had been turned off as a boot device. Weird. But it’s working now.