My current Dell laptop was purchased Aug 2008. It has been a good machine, but the past 2-3 weeks, I have noticed a few glitches. Nothing big, but occasional slow-downs, and then the past 10 days or so, it has unexpectedly shut down. Rebooted without a problem. I presumed it was overheating, so yesterday I removed the cover to the fan, and blew out the dust and dog hair. It was not significantly dirty, but I hoped it would fix the problem. Apparently not.

This morning, I got a sudden Blue Screen of Death, telling me the machine was soon to die, and to make a final will and testament. Figuring that I should finally pay attention to what some would call "clues", I sat it down and drove over to Office Depot. I bought an HP laptop, and am currently in the process of using the Microsoft "Easy Transfer" application to move data from the old to the new, via my home WiFi. I am on one of the other computers in the Casa de Statdoc, to post this.

I am curious to see how much moves over, and how much I will have to reinstall. Anyone used the "Transfer Wizard" before? I also have all my stuff backed up via Carbonite, and locally to another hard drive, so I am not really worried about data loss. It would be nice not to have to do much manual restoration, though.

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