I finally received my new laptop today. It was sort of a surprise, since the Dell website indicated that it hadn't even shipped yet. Of course the first thing to do was uninstall all the extra crap. Dell really does put a lot of shit on their computers. Real Player...maybe when it becomes relevant again. Wild Tangent...delete that spyware shit before it even gets started. Corel Photo Album...if I need a photo organizer I'll use Google's Picasa, which is free. Google Desktop...I like software that doesn't take over my CPU and send out all my personal information. And get rid of all those dial-up installers. Then it's time for updates. Then I can start downloading some software, starting with Firefox and Thunderbird.

This is the first time I've "migrated" to a new computer, so I tried out the Windows File and Settings Transfer Wizard. It works fine, but it's also an easy way to fuck up your new computer just like the old one. I basically removed everything it wanted to transfer by default and instead selected the few folders I really needed and my old Thunderbird address book and settings. Anything else I can easily redo myself.

So I gotta say the new laptop is pretty sweet. It's actually bigger than my old one. The screen is the same height as my old one, but since it is widescreen, it's almost an inch wider. Plus it has that coating that makes the LCD all shiny for playing DVDs. I think it has a setting for booting up directly into a media player for watching DVDs without having to boot fully into Windows, but I haven't tested that out yet.

Oh, and I got some work done today as well. I've been working on some intricate plots this week, so I'll try to post them tomorrow to show off. I'll probably be the only one impressed.