Laptop Update

Monday

I came home from work to find that DHL had delivered the hard drive 2 business days after it shipped! I had gotten "free shipping 3-5 days ground" and it came 2nd Day Air! Most likely because it hadn't shipped for 2 weeks after I ordered it.

Opening the box revealed that the hard drive came already installed into the Dell bracket for installation with an extra security screw to hold the assembly in place. I swapped the hard drives in a matter of less than 5 minutes. That was so easy I set my sights on installing Windows XP that evening. And so it worked out. I got Windows installed followed by the device drivers and then the first round of Windows updates - not including SP-2 - and installed Norton Antivirus 2005 getting a bonus 4+ months of coverage in the process, which partially makes up for getting gypped out of two Symantec rebates this fall. Adding in ICQ 2003a and ZoneAlarm rounded out my night.


Tuesday

I skipped band being too tired (Jean snored repeatedly in the night and I woke up at 4:30 AM to visit the WC and never got fully back to sleep again) to concentrate on music so I did dishes while starting the SP-2 download and installation. I installed Office XP 2003 and downloaded 45 MB of security updates for Office. In addition I installed:
1. Photo Album 3 (Jasc)
2. Adobe Acrobat Reader 7
3. WinZip 8
4. SpyBot 1.4
5. RegCleaner
6. Roxio Easy CD Creator
7. Microsoft Media Player 10
8. Zondervan NIV Bible
9. WS FTP LE
10. Google Toolbar

After scanning the whole hard drive with NAV 2005 I think that we are back to where we were, or very nearly so, before the hard drive died. This post is being made from the laptop as I sit on the sofa with my feet up - once again!

The hard drive is a 38 GB drive that has about 9 GB filled thus far leaving us about 29 GB free. That should be plenty for the way that we use the computer. The faster speed on the hard drive seems noticable to me - though I may simply be optimistic. Any way I look at it, it's very good to have it back online again for $89 and my time reinstalling. That's not a bad bargain as laptop repairs go.