Patrick Shaw’s Weblog

With many of the major computer manufacturers’ discounting hardware for the holiday season and agencies wanting to spend budgets before 2007 - you might be considering acquiring a new workstation! That’s great! Here are some quick tips for getting ready for moving your settings and your data from one workstation to the other.

General Tips:

• Make sure you have software media (discs) AND license keys for ALL of the software you need to load on the new machine. Examples include Windows XP Professional, QuickBooks Pro, Office 2000, PageMaker, and many, many more. Don’t forget the tools that you may have downloaded from the internet and for which the license key is buried in your email inbox!
• Delete data that you really don’t need. Don’t forget to go through your inbox (sent items and deleted items and items you’ve saved in inbox folders!), make sure that you really need that big picture of your nephew’s new dog and so on!
• Make sure that the people helping with the move have access to administrator credentials.

Windows Tips and Tricks:

• File and Transfer Tips
• Searching and Organizing Files
• 7 Tips to Manage Your Files Better
• How to Change the “My Documents” Location
• Moving Favorites and Desktop Settings

Other Information to Have on Hand:

• Make sure you know how you receive your email. You might be using Outlook with an Exchange Server, or you might be using Outlook with POP3 mail service. You’ll want to make sure you have that information handy so you can get your mail set up on your new workstation
• Make sure you know who provides your internet service. This is usually your ISP, or internet service provider. You’ll want a vendor name, a phone number, and a user name and password, just in case.
• DNS is the service that directs web traffic, and translates your name (such as www.npowerseattle.org) into a number that the internet uses to make sure you receive your email, and so on. You might have a DNS Host in addition to an ISP. Make sure you have that information on hand, just in case!