I’ve finally done it. I’ve moved all my digital stuff from my old primary desktop PC to my new one. I finally had an entire, relatively uninterrupted Saturday to do it. And it feels fabulous. It was a long time coming, as I’ve had the new PC since Christmas (a gift to myself). I just never had the time to get everything moved over to it until recently. So let me spin this PC migration yarn for you.

My old primary desktop PC didn’t croak or anything. It’s still with us. It’s still a decent machine, even by today’s standards… but what drove me to make the move was (a) it was one of the noisiest PCs I’ve ever owned or used; and (b), I use the heck out of it, and it hit the two year mark. Two years might seem to premature to retire a PC, and I mostly agree with that, which is why I may re-purpose it for some other function. But did I mention the noise?

I built it from a small form factor bare bones kit - an American Media Systems eCube EG65D. It came standard with on-board 10/100 Ethernet, AC 97 2.2 Sound, on-board Intel 8965G video, 4 USB 2.0 ports + 3 IEEE 1394 ports. I then dropped in a 2.8GHz P4, 1GB RAM, 160gb EIDE HDD (it also has a SATA interface, which I never used) and an Iomega SuperDVD DVD burner. Later, I added an ATI video board in the AGP slot. Thus this computer became my workhorse, rarely shunning the daily workloads I put on it.

But the noise, or should I say, THE NOISE this thing made was unreal. I could hear it up the stairs from my basement office. Much of the noise was the CPU fan, which I suppose I could have dealt with by simply finding a new fan. I also think the hard drive was producing a lot of noise as well. So the combination was really something to behold. I quickly grew accustomed to it, but I yearned for something quieter. At the two year mark, it was time.

I’m fairly brand agnostic these days, but I sort of knew I wanted a Media Center box so I could watch TV while working. When I saw the special on the Circuit City web site, I knew I found what I was looking for. It was for an HP Pavilion m7250n Media Center PC. After $170 in rebates (yes, I count the rebates), it was roughly $900 for this puppy, Pentium-D, 1gb DDR2 SDRAM, 250gb SATA drive, all sorts of goodies. The only thing that really annoyed me about the specs was that it didn’t have a DVI port on the video card. As fate would have it, after I brought it home, the first one I had was a lemon… wouldn’t power up. In a matter of 90 minutes, I had a new one that was fine. But like I said, it sat under my desk for a couple months before I found the time to move everything over to it. A new PC is one thing, but a new PC that you are making your primary box is something else.

I briefly thought about using a migration utility like Aloha Bob’s PC Relocator, or Detto Intellimover. But I thought to myself, “I’m old School… migration utilities are for sissies.” So I did it by hand. I already had an automatic backup utility on the old box that captured 99% of what I needed copied to an external USB 2.0 drive. Most of the work was just re-installing apps, tweaking settings, setting up shortcut bars… I’m very anal about that stuff. I realize that the migration utilities are designed to handle all of that, but something about them makes me nervous. I guess after your old PC develops a personality, you want to be able to transfer some, but not all of that personality to the new PC. I do owe it to myself to try a migration app or two out for kicks - who knows - I might like them after all.

So I’ve been on this new box for a full week now, and I love love LOVE it. It’s pretty quiet for a full-size tower, although a Boeing Jumbo Jet would seem quiet compared to my old PC. And it’s fast. I dropped in another gig of SDRAM to bring it up to 2GB total memory. I may still put a new PCI-e graphics card in so I have DVI out for my Viewsonic 20″ LCD… VGA connector works for now. I’m not sure what I’ll do with my old eCube PC. Perhaps put a quieter fan and SATA drive in it and make it a network storage box. Who knows, maybe I’ll wipe it and sell it in the community garage sale next summer. Whatever I decide to do with it, hats off that PC for giving me two years off solid and reliable service!

[tags]cpu,digital migration,pc migration,bare bones kit,brand agnostic,aloha bob’s pc relocator,detto intellimover[/tags]