New Computer for Christmas?
So, you got a nice new computer for Christmas, now what? Well, if all you do is browse the internet, do a bit of online shopping and check your Facebook then you are good to go, just plug in hook up to your Wi-Fi or router, power on your new computer, fill in a few new account questions, set the time zone and away you go. Very easy, before you know it you will have forgotten your old computer and be surfing away on your new toy.
Now, if you use your computer for more than just browsing and checking your Facebook then the transition may take a bit more work. If you have been using it for work and you have an archive of important files and documents, you are going to want to transfer these to your new computer. If you regularly print out things, then you are going to want to install your printer on your new computer too.
These things sometime sound like they could be a little bit daunting, but there is no need for them to be. Just get a little prepared first. Have a look at your old computer and inventory the documents that you might like to transfer. Chances are that the file sizes won’t be too large. If all you are transferring are documents and pdf files the file sizes are fairly small. If you have many photos and videos then the file sizes may be a lot larger.
Thankfully, nowadays memory is cheap. The best way to combat this job is with a usb flash drive (less than $20 will get you something big enough to fit all your files on), or and external usb hard drive if you have many photos and videos on your old computer, ($50 will get you something that is probably larger than your old computer’s hard drive), so head over to amazon or a site like newegg.com and get the tool you need. You can got to office max or best buy, but usually you will pay a little more at local stores.
One you have your flash drive or hard drive, plug it in to an available usb port on your old computer, you will usually get a popup asking you what you would like to do, hit ‘open folder’, if you don’t get this popup you can just navigate or browse to ‘my computer’ or ‘this pc’, you should see the new drive listed there. One you have the drive folder open just hit the ‘- sign’ and minimize it to the task bar. Now you are going to want to navigate to the folder that has the files that you want to transfer to your new computer. Many programs will use the “my documents’ folder by default, so if you are not sure that is a good place to start. You can usually find your pictures and video folders here too. Once you have the files or folders you need for your new computer, just copy (just right click and drag to select, the right click and select copy or hit ctrl + c). Click on your new drive folder (the one we minimized to the toolbar earlier), once it is open right click and select paste or hit ctrl +v. The copied files will now start to be written to the new drive, (this process may take some time depending on the amount of files you have selected to transfer to your new computer.
Once this process is complete you can move your drive to the new computer, hook it up to an available usb port. Once you open your usb drive you can just copy the files again and place them where you want them on your new computer. Job done!
Remember you will need to re install any programs you had been using on your old computer such as Microsoft office. You may also want to add some more virus and malware protection (Windows 8 and 10 both have inbuilt antivirus, but many computer sources recommend adding a third party antivirus solution). You can find some great free antivirus and software solutions on our site ‘here’.
I hope this has been useful for you, enjoy your new computer!
