My shiny* new Asus G74S-AH71 arrived today. This makes me happy.
(*actually, it's sort of a coated matte black, not shiny)
Things I've Done So Far
– Started it up and gone through all the initial Windows setup, patches, etc.
– Turned on Windows Defender rather than the bloatware AV trial version the machine came with.
– Downloaded Chrome, made it my default.
— Signed in, synced up add-ins, etc.
— Downloaded and installed LastPass (password management software)
— Downloaded and installed Xmarks (bookmark management software)
– Installed and synced up Dropbox
– Installed "City of Heroes". (Double XP weekend, here I come!)
– The system HD comes in two partitions, C & D. I reset the DVD drive to be F (instead of E), so that the USB drive I have with my iTunes library and PIcassa files will still show up as E … which I desperately hope will make getting those systems back up and running a lot easier with less metadata loss.
– Extracted the hard drive from the old laptop and put it in a USB enclosure. In theory this will let me do a bulk copy of files over from there. While I do have that recent Backblaze restore USB drive, it's missing some of the files I've generated/downloaded the past few weeks, which is unfortunate. After I'm done, in theory that hard drive will go back in and I'll be able to take the old laptop into the shop for whatever slow-boat repairs they might want to make. This all presupposes that the problem I'm having wasn't a problem with the hard drive.
Things Left To Do
– Copy over all the documents/libraries from the old hard drive to the new one. I may need to push some of that data to the data partition — I'll have to see. My plan is to start as big a copy operation as I can as I head up to bed tonight.
– Install iTunes. Get it to work with previous iTunes library on the old USB drive.
– Install Picasa. Get it to work with the previous Picasa library of photos (and copious metadata) on old USB drive.
– Install Calibre. Get it pointed to my restored collection of ebooks.
– Install Audacity for doing my podcast by this weekend (Sunday?)
– Install Skype for doing the Stupid Evil Podcast (this weekend?)
– Install Ywriter for doing my Great American Novel work
– Install some other stuff (NotePad Plus, maybe OpenOffice)
– Get the drivers for the printer installed.
– Install Backblaze. Reconfigure for the new drives. Start getting stuff backed up!
– Check and see if there are any BIOS updates.
– Delete the remaining ASUS-loaded bloatware and offerware.
Things I like and dislike about the machine already
Likes:
– Fantastic graphics, full 1080p screen, and a strong Nvidia card (GTX-560M). CoH looks faboo.
– Backlit keyboard.
Dislikes:
– The USB ports are much more forward along the sides, which makes stuff next to the computer (e.g., the mouse) a lot more difficult to maneuver.
– The keyboard's a little weird. There's no dedicated INSERT key; instead, it's a Fn variant on the DELETE key. Since I am a longtime user of CUA-style cut-and-paste keys, that's a damned inconvenience.
So that's the current status, for my own future reference as any interest I think anyone else would have. #ddtb
Actually, as a tech support guy, I often find what other people use and why very interesting. For example, I’d never heard of yWriter until you mentioned it here. Looks nifty and the next time I feel like pretending I’m finally going to write a novel I’ll probably play with it until I realize I have no talent.
I was introduced to it by a member of my writing group (oooh, doesn’t that sound impressive). Main thing I see it doing is giving me a built-in way to take notes about characters and settings and the like. I’m retrofitting my NaNo novel (which I did in Google Docs) into it.
Yeah. I do these “hey, this is what is on my machine” posts both for my own future edification / amusement and to essentially share ideas (“Hey, never heard of that before!” / “Oh, you’re still using that, I swapped it out for this years ago!”). Plus it makes me actually track what I’m doing. 😛