Getting some life back into the laptop

We had planned to replace our laptop computer this year before we leave mostly for a faster processor and a good graphics card to support new navigation software. With the launch of Vista, we have decided to wait at least a year to allow release of a service pack to correct bugs to allow time for the navigation software to be certified for Vista.

However our current laptop has been running very slow and defragging the C:\ drive has not solved the problem. There are just too many files which cannot be moved so the disk hasn’t cleaned up very well.

This past weekend I collected all of the software disks, backup the data files to an external 160 GB hard drive which we just added to the system and then bravely loaded the system recovery into the CD drive. This cleaned the C:\ drive completely and then began the rebuild from scratch. It took all weekend to get the system back to the condition we wanted. The system has its’ old speed back and the C:\ drive is very clean and has plenty of available space. We did loose some emails which I was saving more or less permanently and I need to manually rebuild the address book and add calendar entries.

Next in line is to add wireless with a high gain antenna so that we can connect from anchorages and to set up Skype so we can call family from more remote areas.