I mentioned back at the start of December that my thoughts were bending towards an upgraded computer.  My wife, on reading that, pressed me to just go order something right away, unable to bear my fussing over building or even configuring a system for months on end, as I tend to do.

She had done a rather outstanding job in real estate in 2023, her commissions more than doubling my own salary, and while the bite of the tax man looms in the coming months… we send in estimated taxes and I claim zero deductions just to buffer us, but even so the tax bill is always a bit of a mystery every year, so ome years I expect to pay and we get a refund, others I am sure we’ve paid and then some, only to end up writing another check on April 15th… we had money in the bank.

So I did as she asked and ordered a rig from Digital Storm, choosing their Lumos line as my foundation.  The holidays were busy and they were having a special, so the 15 business days stretched out by a bit, but my old computer was still chugging away and I wasn’t in a huge hurry.  When I got the message on Monday that it was ready to pick up, I set an appointment and we drove down to Gilroy, a once rural community south of San Jose and a place where a company like Digital Storm can afford to rent enough space behind the outlet mall along the highway to accommodate their operation.

They have a clean and spacious, if somewhat unadorned, facility where we had to ring the bell to get somebody to come around and let us in.

I opted for the drive because, even though there was an offer of free shipping when I put in my order, I did not want to subject it to the whims of delivery even in the mild rains that coastal California calls winter.

We were let in where I showed my ID and signed for the big box, which we then drove home.  Once in the house, the cats were, of course, attracted to the sight of a new box.

Rigby senses a new adventure

I unboxed the unit as they watched intently.

Miles stands behind me, waiting for the box

Then, when I had the system out on the floor, they played in the box.  Everybody was happy.

So what did I get this time around?  This is from the order list:

• Chassis Model: Digital Storm Lumos
• Processor: Intel Core i7-14700KF (5.6 GHz Turbo) (28-Thread) (20-Core) 3.4 GHz (14th Gen)
• Motherboard: ASUS Prime B760M-A AX D5 (Wi-Fi) (Intel B760)
• System Memory: 64GB DDR5 6000MHz Kingston FURY Beast RGB
• Power Supply: 750W Digital Storm Performance Series (80 Plus Gold)
• Storage Set 1: 1x SSD M.2 (2TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS) (NVM Express)
• Storage Set 2: 1x SSD M.2 (2TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS) (NVM Express)
• Graphics Card(s): 1x GeForce RTX 4070 12GB (VR Ready)
• Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 2: Digital Storm Vortex Liquid CPU Cooler (Dual Fan) (Fully Sealed + No Maintenance)
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Professional (64-Bit)

So I am pretty happy with that.

However, the excitement of getting a new computer is off-set a bit for me by the prospect of having to get things moved from the old unit to the new.

I always have this dream of just starting fresh and downloading only what I need, but the reality is that I have to drag stuff forward, things that I need, things that I think I might need, and things that I do not want to lose.  So I have directories with things archived like the invitations we designed for our wedding… and we’re going to be celebrating our 25th anniversary later this year.

While the new computer entered the house on Tuesday, it did not end up being setup in my office until Friday at lunch.  It spent some time in my daughter’s room where I set it up with my old monitor, a keyboard and mouse, and an Ethernet over power connection to the router so that I could work on transferring data.

I used Zinstall to transfer key stuff like settings and some apps.  I had hoped that Windows would do some of the heavy lifting on that front.  It jumped right in there once I linked the new machine to my Microsoft account and said it would get all the settings and programs… and then it did nothing of the sort.  It grabbed some inadequate subset of settings and put shortcuts to apps in the Windows menu, then balked at downloading any that were not in the Microsoft store.  So I fell back on Zinstall.

Zinstall is excellent at grabbing all sorts of things I might only realize later that I want, though it is also very good at dragging forward things that maybe I don’t need.  That ran over night and later I had to go through with the Registery Editor to clean up some things that it got a bit carried away with.

Then I used Windows file history and a 5TB external USB drive to restore additional files and directories from my old system to the new one.  That worked surprisingly well, though could be very slow at times.

I did find that Steam was helpful at getting things installed.  If both machines were online and had Steam running, it would grab files across the network rather than over the internet to install on the new machine.

Steam grabbing from the old PC

And some stuff I just did fresh installs with.  Not a lot, but a few key items.

By Friday at lunch I had hit critical mass on the new machine and swapped the two units in the house, making the Digital Storm box my office machine so anything new I did would be there.

I still have stuff to grab from the old machine and things to figure out.  I’d love to get Notepad++ on the new machine to magically open up all the damn text file tabs I have on the old one, but I’ll figure something out.  And I am going to take the one archive drive with old screen shots and pictures and just put it in the new machine.  That will solve that problem.

But I have mostly made the transition.  Then, when I am feeling sure I am done I’ll back up the old rig one last time, then wipe it and set it up fresh for my wife to use as her machine.  She is soldiering on with a rather old Dell box and a 1280×1024 monitor that I think I bought back in 2003.  Things accumulate as you age.

So far so good though.

One thing I did buy was Stardock’s Start11 utility that lets you change the look of Windows 11 Start Menu back to something more familiar.  I got used to the Windows 10 look, but Win11 is just a bit too goofy for me.  I say this as somebody who had Windows XP setup to look like NT 4.0 because I am just that guy.

I mentioned back at the start of December that my thoughts were bending towards an upgraded computer.  My wife, on reading that, pressed me to just go order something right away, unable to bear my fussing over building or even configuring a system for months on end, as I tend to do.

She had done a rather outstanding job in real estate in 2023, her commissions more than doubling my own salary, and while the bite of the tax man looms in the coming months… we send in estimated taxes and I claim zero deductions just to buffer us, but even so the tax bill is always a bit of a mystery every year, so ome years I expect to pay and we get a refund, others I am sure we’ve paid and then some, only to end up writing another check on April 15th… we had money in the bank.

So I did as she asked and ordered a rig from Digital Storm, choosing their Lumos line as my foundation.  The holidays were busy and they were having a special, so the 15 business days stretched out by a bit, but my old computer was still chugging away and I wasn’t in a huge hurry.  When I got the message on Monday that it was ready to pick up, I set an appointment and we drove down to Gilroy, a once rural community south of San Jose and a place where a company like Digital Storm can afford to rent enough space behind the outlet mall along the highway to accommodate their operation.

They have a clean and spacious, if somewhat unadorned, facility where we had to ring the bell to get somebody to come around and let us in.

I opted for the drive because, even though there was an offer of free shipping when I put in my order, I did not want to subject it to the whims of delivery even in the mild rains that coastal California calls winter.

We were let in where I showed my ID and signed for the big box, which we then drove home.  Once in the house, the cats were, of course, attracted to the sight of a new box.

Rigby senses a new adventure

I unboxed the unit as they watched intently.

Miles stands behind me, waiting for the box

Then, when I had the system out on the floor, they played in the box.  Everybody was happy.

So what did I get this time around?  This is from the order list:

• Chassis Model: Digital Storm Lumos
• Processor: Intel Core i7-14700KF (5.6 GHz Turbo) (28-Thread) (20-Core) 3.4 GHz (14th Gen)
• Motherboard: ASUS Prime B760M-A AX D5 (Wi-Fi) (Intel B760)
• System Memory: 64GB DDR5 6000MHz Kingston FURY Beast RGB
• Power Supply: 750W Digital Storm Performance Series (80 Plus Gold)
• Storage Set 1: 1x SSD M.2 (2TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS) (NVM Express)
• Storage Set 2: 1x SSD M.2 (2TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS) (NVM Express)
• Graphics Card(s): 1x GeForce RTX 4070 12GB (VR Ready)
• Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 2: Digital Storm Vortex Liquid CPU Cooler (Dual Fan) (Fully Sealed + No Maintenance)
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Professional (64-Bit)

So I am pretty happy with that.

However, the excitement of getting a new computer is off-set a bit for me by the prospect of having to get things moved from the old unit to the new.

I always have this dream of just starting fresh and downloading only what I need, but the reality is that I have to drag stuff forward, things that I need, things that I think I might need, and things that I do not want to lose.  So I have directories with things archived like the invitations we designed for our wedding… and we’re going to be celebrating our 25th anniversary later this year.

While the new computer entered the house on Tuesday, it did not end up being setup in my office until Friday at lunch.  It spent some time in my daughter’s room where I set it up with my old monitor, a keyboard and mouse, and an Ethernet over power connection to the router so that I could work on transferring data.

I used Zinstall to transfer key stuff like settings and some apps.  I had hoped that Windows would do some of the heavy lifting on that front.  It jumped right in there once I linked the new machine to my Microsoft account and said it would get all the settings and programs… and then it did nothing of the sort.  It grabbed some inadequate subset of settings and put shortcuts to apps in the Windows menu, then balked at downloading any that were not in the Microsoft store.  So I fell back on Zinstall.

Zinstall is excellent at grabbing all sorts of things I might only realize later that I want, though it is also very good at dragging forward things that maybe I don’t need.  That ran over night and later I had to go through with the Registery Editor to clean up some things that it got a bit carried away with.

Then I used Windows file history and a 5TB external USB drive to restore additional files and directories from my old system to the new one.  That worked surprisingly well, though could be very slow at times.

I did find that Steam was helpful at getting things installed.  If both machines were online and had Steam running, it would grab files across the network rather than over the internet to install on the new machine.

Steam grabbing from the old PC

And some stuff I just did fresh installs with.  Not a lot, but a few key items.

By Friday at lunch I had hit critical mass on the new machine and swapped the two units in the house, making the Digital Storm box my office machine so anything new I did would be there.

I still have stuff to grab from the old machine and things to figure out.  I’d love to get Notepad++ on the new machine to magically open up all the damn text file tabs I have on the old one, but I’ll figure something out.  And I am going to take the one archive drive with old screen shots and pictures and just put it in the new machine.  That will solve that problem.

But I have mostly made the transition.  Then, when I am feeling sure I am done I’ll back up the old rig one last time, then wipe it and set it up fresh for my wife to use as her machine.  She is soldiering on with a rather old Dell box and a 1280×1024 monitor that I think I bought back in 2003.  Things accumulate as you age.

So far so good though.

One thing I did buy was Stardock’s Start11 utility that lets you change the look of Windows 11 Start Menu back to something more familiar.  I got used to the Windows 10 look, but Win11 is just a bit too goofy for me.  I say this as somebody who had Windows XP setup to look like NT 4.0 because I am just that guy.