Setting up a New laptop [and how to survive it]

When my trusty old desktop had finally had enough, Herb treated me to a new laptop. I was quietly pleased and a bit excited, but I had witnessed him helping my sister 'set up' their new laptop. I do not, after experience, now trouble myself to try to deal with technicalities which I cannot really hope to master!

Herb did 'do it' for me and I happily now can work away fairly happily.

Here are instructions on setting up a new laptop!

I do hope we have covered as many probabilities as necessary.

Of course you can pay the boys in the PC shops to do it for you, but you may be brave, intelligent, stupid or crazy enough to do it yourself, so...........

• Start Up --let it do it's own starting up
• Create a set of recovery DVDs of whole installation of machine
• Windows Easy Transfer Programme to transfer all data from old machine to new
• Windows 7 Back up onto appropriate device eg Seagate External disc drive
• Work from a list of software you may want to install eg KeePass [more later]
• Sort Anti-virus and Firewall software solution
• We uninstalled the free trial of Macafee, and downloaded AVG for free
• Run full virus scan - we has 25 warnings within our first minute when installing AVG.
• Windows Easy transfer Prog. report and get report of files and you'll notice that some files have changed location from 1 folder to another, be aware this will happen - look out for it!
• Go and check that all files you hope have been transferred, have actually been transferred.
• Look at Windows Easy Transfer list and decide which programme you then need to install eg KeePass - superb safe way to have a secure check list of ALL your passwords for anything you need!
• Then decide if you want to pay money for OFFICE or switch to Open Office [ I was told to by Herb, so far so good- more notes later- if it causes me grief I will let you know , I'm afraid I was a miscrosoft word girl, and slow to give it up!
• Update your favourites folder
• Which browsers do you want to install?- we use Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, Opera and Safari. Again I was an Internet Explorer fan but have become quite attached to Google Chrome- quite amazingly Herb finally informed me that in Google Chrome- the www. bar - if you type what you think you're looking for, it acts as a google search for you, without laboriously going out and in to Google itself. This will be relevant to lesser mortals,for those who know that- great!
• Set up printers
• If you choose to do it yourself, [maybe a skilled friend could sit by you] you will learn so much more!

Good Luck, if you have a positive, determined attitude, this could help, do not be frightened.

[even with all my reiki knowledge I was I'm afraid of a negative persuasion but of course we cannot all be good at everything!!! ]

Oh look theres' a broken graphic

This must be a hangover from the troubles I had trying to follow instructions to make use of a custom domain name for this google blogger blog. The graphic that's missing is the one that appears in the comments block after each post. Course you can't tell it's broken in Firefox and I haven't checked IE, Opera or Safari lately.

Something for a rainy day... which thanks to St. Swithin will be all of the next 30 something days.

We don't do hardware but we know a man who does

Yesterday we had to call in a PC specialist in order to fix problems on two of our aged desktops.
For Herb's machine there was a very noisy fan on the newish graphics card.
Simple fix: unplug the electric lead to the fan so that it no longer attempts to whizz

For my machine: well... it was OK if I just wanted to look at the sign in screen, but as soon as I started it up the whole displayed charged from left to right so you couldn't see a thing.
When I've learnt how I'll try to paste an example of what it looked like
Fix: reset the whole system to default settings and then reduce the screen resolution from (blah) to something less.
Explanation: the machine was not designed to handle a super duper 20" wide screen so has a tantrum throws its toys out of the pram.

... but today... we have migrated from BT internet to Utilities Warehouse broadband and it's playing up again.
I may soon be the happy owner of a shiny new laptop.

Oh, and the man who does (fix hardware) is called David Somma ( www.microsomma.com )

I can't get this advanced blogging to work?

Well, I've tried following the instructions but it's not publishing on my domain

Bobbing Wide PC support open for business

This is Bobbing Wide's Google blogger blog about PC support. It primarily discusses the PC programs that we use in Bobbing Wide's development and support of our customers. This blog is written using using Google blogger at bobbingwidepcsupport.blogspot.com but is hosted on www.bobbingwidepcsupport.com