The Setup Games

When I ordered our latest PC, I was advised it would be available around mid-March - later than I'd hoped, but I figured it was worth the wait. Plus, it was coming on a Monday, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle for LC to arrange to be in for the delivery. But on Wednesday there was 'good' news - the PC was coming on Saturday! This was a bit more of a hassle, as we were busy entertaining on Saturday, but at least we'd be around for the delivery...

Then on Friday, just as I was walking out the door to head to work, I received a text telling me it was coming between 12.20 and 13.20 that day. Um, great... I think? Anyway, I had to hastily switch to working from home on Friday in order to take the delivery - I neither wanted to have to wait for the inevitable rescheduled delivery (which no doubt would be a hassle anyway), nor did I want to risk them leaving it in a 'safe' place.

So the new PC arrived on Friday at 11.30. Which is almost one of the times they said.

The PC then sat in its box until Saturday, when I dug it out, connected it up, and got started. And inevitably found that I didn't like it - Microsoft have, in their wisdom, decided to change the desktop layout again and don't provide a handy "put it back the way we like it" option. Sigh.

The requisite moan about that out of the way, I then got started with installing the various bits of software: a replacement browser, the office suite, PDF and ZIP tools, and so on and so forth. It really does feel like there should be an easier way to do all of this, but unfortunately right now it looks like there's just an easier way to do some of this.

So we're now more or less set up. As far as I can see there remain three things to do: recover as much of the data from my old PC as possible (we have backups, but I'm hoping that the hard drive remains intact so I can get the definitive most up-to-date version of everything), reinstall Dropbox (which is best done after getting the data, so the folder can be set up easily), and switch the anti-virus software (from the installed free trial to the one we've been paying for).

It's funny how getting a new and better PC still involves hours upon hours of work getting it ready.