After mowing the lawn and installing the car and home adapters for the XM radio, I decided to tackle the computer transfer project. I won’t get a better weekend than this for at least a month. UPS delivered the computer late yesterday afternoon. I unboxed it and validated Windows XP last night. Today, I loaded software. I decided to put it on the Internet and get the software and driver updates. Of course, I had to call the provider to give them the new fixed address. No problem so far (at least, not after I re-installed the video card driver, which was problematic in its out of the box configuration). I have a way to go, but so far, I’ve accomplished the following:

I installed Inspiration, SystemWorks, Studio, Office, and AIM. “My Documents” is connected via my Maxtor back-up drive–still need to copy files to the new PC. I’ve imported my old .pst, so email is fully operational. I’m trying to figure the best way to bring my Favorites over for both IE and Firefox–probably go into the old directories and copy them over to the new source. I still need to install Firefox, RealPlayer, Acrobat Reader, iPod and Palm software. I also have to get around to firing up and configuring my wireless router. Then I can clone the desktop network address and not have to worry about how many other PCs I add to the connection.

In case you’re wondering, the new machine is a semi-cutom built machine put together by Adamant Computers in Cleveland, OH. This is the third system I’ve purchased from them–the first two were bare bones (AMD Athlon 750s). This one was configured with everything that needed to be inside the case included. All external peripherals came from the old machine–they were all purchased within the last year and were technologically current. I may move the 80G hard drive over from the old one too, but it depends what I decide to do with the old machine–and if it’s compatible; I didn’t check. Besides, I’ve grown very fond of external USB drives.

OK. OK. For the techno-geeks in the crowd (everyone else, you can stop reading here):

The official model: Adamant Associate 3040 Professional Business Computer (AMD Business PC Series)

Super Mini tower, Antec Sonata II Ultra-Quiet, 450 Watt ATX PS, Piano Black
Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 Socket-939 Motherboard
Athlon 64 3000+ Retail, 939 pin, with Heat sink and Fan, 3 year Mfr warranty
1024MB (2x512MB) PC3200 DDR memory, Crucial
HDD, Maxtor, 300GB ATA/133 7200RPM, 16MB Cache
Asus, Radeon 9250 256MB, A9250/GE/TD/256
Floppy Drive, Mitsumi 3.5″, 1.44MB, Black
Sony, Dual Layer 16x DVD+/-RW, CD-R/RW, DWU-Q28A, Black
Built-in 6-Channel Audio
Built-in Dual Gigabit LAN
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition, Full System Builder Version
Assembled and tested, 3 years parts and lifetime labor warranty