My main Windows XP Pro box became increasingly flaky over the last few days and finally refused to boot yesterday. I have multiple complete image backups and data-only backups, but a combination of needing to get back to work fast, plus a lingering hope that I may be able to revive the XP box for backup, plus plain old techno lust for an up-to-date box with the latest OS resulted in coughing up $669 for a new machine with Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit edition.
Here's what a little over C$700 with tax gets you computer-wise these days:
Not bad. I didn't need to cough up for software, because I planned to install all my favourite programs that had been on the XP box. Good thing I got the new machine, because a CHKDSK /R of the main HD on the XP box is now at 74% after running for more than 30 hours.
So here I am after two days of installing apps and restoring data from backups. It's amazing how time-consuming this is. Installing apps is a pain - tracking down CDs, re-downloading some apps, entering all the registration data. . . Restoring data also takes hours: my photos alone tally around 250GB, and that took 4 1/2 hours to copy from an external USB 2 HD onto the internal HD of the new machine. Not to mention several dozen gigs more of My Documents, Music, etc.
So far, so good. I'm finding Windows 7 to be fast and clean. Love the 64-bit OS with 6GB of RAM - can keep lots of programs open without slowing things down. I find Windows 7 quite intuitive and not much of a learning curve compared to XP. I never had a machine with Vista, so can't comment on that OS. So far I haven't encountered any issues with running older 32-bit software on the 64-bit OS. I did have to download new 64-bit drivers for my printer, and I haven't got the scanner hooked up yet.
There have been a few strange occurrences along the way. I recently switched to Outlook 2007 for calendaring and to-do lists after years of Palm Desktop. I sync to an iPod Touch, and somehow the first sync with the iPod after restoring my Outlook.PST file resulted in a slew of strange, repeating calendar entries that went on for decades. I thought I'd zapped the errant entries, only to have them all reappear on a subsequent sync. Zapped them all again, forced a one-way sync from the Windows 7 box to completely overwrite the calendar on the iPod Touch, and. . . knock on plastic, it seems to be OK now.
I figure another day, and I'll have about 80% of the apps and 95% of the data from the old machine on the new box. The balance I'll deal with on an as-needed basis. Some of it I likely won't miss at all. HDs are so cheap these days that I've kept the main HDs from my last three or four Windows boxes on hand, just in case I missed transferring something to a newer machine along the way. I have an external USB 2 SATA HD cradle so I can easily pop drives in and out - it's cheap insurance to keep the old ones around and not overwrite them.
Posted by Paul at December 8, 2009 08:00 PM