Finally got the PC carcass (that was kindly donated) up and running, would have been a lot sooner if for one thing: I wanted an exact clone of my existing PC, same settings, programs, partitions (all 8 of them*), etc. And it wasn’t much fun. A clean install of XP would have been over and done with in under an hour, but the idea of re-authorising all of my (paid) software was more than I could bear…**
Since my PC was an Athlon XP 3000 (ask your Granddad) it was really struggling to do the things I was doing – making music, editing movies, etc. This ‘new’ one (which is not all that new) is at least twice the speed, and so far runs like a dream.
Next time, there won’t be a next time – I’ll just buy a new computer.
*I have separate partitions for Documents, MP3s, VSTs, Music recording, etc. It makes it easier to back things up. In theory.
**Luckily, quite a lot of the software doesn’t realise it’s on a different hard drive in a different machine, and it didn’t need re-authorising at all.
What? Why Bother? 