New Computer

[Flick]

Hello friends and neighbors! Six years ago I bought a HP Pavilion 9795C. I added RAM, an additional hard drive, optical mouse, keyboard and a few other hardware improvements. I got rid of Windows ME and upgraded to XP. In short, that computer was a workhorse for me and I only had a few minor problems over the years.

Last month, my primary hard drive (60 GB) became corrupted and I couldn’t boot the computer. Fortunately, I had the entire drive (with the OS) backed up to my second hard drive (80 GB). I was able to boot from the second drive with no problems. I was going to remove the bad drive, replace it with the good drive and then buy and install another backup drive.

However, six years is a long service life for a computer. I decided instead to just buy a new computer to take advantage of all the new features now available. I copied all my essential data from the old hard drive onto a couple of USB thumb drives and then physically destroyed both old hard drives.

I bought a new HP Pavilion a1268c-b from Sam’s Club for $890.00. It had everything I needed but a printer. I bought an inexpensive HP DeskJet 3940 printer. I made the HP Recovery DVD Set and the HP Recovery Tools CD first thing. I then transferred some of my data to the new hard drive. I plan to buy another SATA hard drive to use as a backup or perhaps use an external USB hard drive.

Over the next few weeks I’ll load up my other programs from CD’s and load up the rest of my data. This computer came preloaded with Microsoft Office 2003 Student and Teacher Edition (60 day trial version). I have the program on CD, so I just had to type in my product key to convert it to the full version.

All in all, it was a very easy transition and this computer has a lot of very nice features!

[azzey]

Personally, I would have saved the good 80gb drive just as backup. External enclosures are inexpensive these days and external drives are great for backing up data or for moving large files. What did you end up doing with the old computer? And just for the heck of it, what were the specs? Gosh I'm bored... Just my $0.03 http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[Flick]

Here are the specs:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph06248&product=59791&dlc=en&lang=en
I put 1GB of Rambus in it about a year after I got the machine.

After I destroyed the old hard drives, I realized that I had another new 80 GB hard drive that I had in storage (it was an RMA from Maxtor). I then cleaned the “dust bunnies” out of the computer and installed the new hard drive. I loaded up my copy of Windows XP, Microsoft Works and a few other programs I no longer needed and made sure it all worked.

I took the old computer with the software and donated it all to the local Goodwill Industries.

[Flick]

In setting up the new computer there were a few maintenance tasks that I had to perform. My old computer came from the factory with System Recovery Disks. With the new computer, a partition was set aside on the hard disk with the system recovery information to allow me to make my own set of recovery disks.

HP points out that you can only make one set of recovery disks, due to their agreements with the various software vendors. Yet, HP also sells the recovery disk set ($12.00) and you can buy as many sets as you may desire. It makes me wonder about their true motives and intentions.

First thing I did with the new computer was delete all the junk software such as the all the ISP vendors and the Norton junk. I learned from my last computer that all things Norton and Symantec must be removed before they are given the opportunity to infect the computer. Norton is, of course, very difficult to remove. It can be done. It’s a lot easier to remove right off the bat than if you wait and let it entrench itself into the registry. Then it becomes a nightmare to remove.

Once I was free of Norton, I installed the new Windows Live OneCare. So far, I like this software. It’s easy to uninstall. I still have valid subscriptions to both Avast and Zone Alarm to fall back on if the Windows Live OneCare fails me. I’m also using Spybot Search & Destroy and SpywareBlaster along with the Windows program. I have all the current Windows security updates (Office 2003, Explorer, Outlook, etc.) although I did notice something about the Windows update policy that bothered me.

If you’re running this computer with the 60 day trial version of Office 2003, then it will not allow you to update Office 2003 with Service Pack 2 nor will Windows Update allow the update for the Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB919031). As soon as you “activate” from the trial version to full version, you can then get these updates. Bill Gates strikes again!

I also got a driver update from HP for the monitor.

The speakers that come with the system are junk and I replaced them with my existing Altec Lansing speakers. Thus far I am very pleased with this system and the price I paid.