The advance X-mas warning team tells me I may be getting an iPod Nano for X-mas (nice wife). However, we have an “old” computer, that does not have the proper Windows OS to align with iTunes. IANACG (comp guru), so I have a few questions, please.
I have access to a copy (purchased from eBay) of Windows 2000. My little computer knowledge tells me that by installing a new OS, I will probably erase most of my current content on the computer (pentium 3 Hewlett-packard Pavilion series…my wife’s computer). Is this true, or will the software simply overwrite the needed parts, not molesting others? Can I back all of this up on a succession of CDs? I also seem to remember how to create a “boot disc”…if I do this, will this enable an easy transition?
If I’m on a p3 computer with dial-up (soon to get DSL), will d/l-ing a song take unconcionably long? Can I take the iPod and put songs on it from CDs without access to iTunes?
As you can see, I’m a little confused. Please fight my ignorance!
You can upgrade leaving the original software in place. Though it is often not too bad an idea to start with a clean slate, this is a possibility.
Downloading songs will take a fairly long time on dial-up. Much worse is downloading Windows 2000 upgrades and new drivers you may need for some of your hardware, should you upgrade. I would therefore not recommend upgrading before you get that DSL.
If you want to back up stuff, you should be able to copy all the important stuff to the iPod. The important stuff is usually limited in size - documents, some pictures. Should fit on an iPod mini (4Gb?). Applications can typically be better freshly installed. Just make sure you still have the registration information for any software you may have purchased online.
You are also probably a lot better off installing Windows XP, as that is more efficient with system resources (especially RAM memory, it works pretty ok with 128mb). And it’s faster booting up, which counts on slower computers. See if you can get that from E-bay.
If your computer has less than 128mb memory (working memory), or a harddrive smaller than 6Gb, I would also not really recommend upgrading before upgrading either. Downloading songs starts taking up space pretty quick.
It sounds like you’re going to upgrade your OS because of your iPod. If that’s the only reason, I wouldn’t bother, and instead go to ipodlounge.com and search their software stuff. There should be some free software that will transfer songs and such to iPod.
On second view, I just saw that you don’t currently have 2000, you’re going to upgrade to 2000. You might just want to do that anyway. Upgrading shouldn’t erase anything.
I recently did just that for a similar reason (I wanted to use Rhapsody and Yahoo Music Express) with an old Dell P3 that had Windows 98SE . In my case, I bought the upgrade version of XP Home and upgraded (rather than a clean install, which was an option). During setup, XP reported which programs won’t work with XP and those that will need to be reinstalled. Only a few programs that I really didn’t need didn’t make it, and I had to reinstall few games.
The end result was that most of my programs and all of my settings were preserved and work with XP. However, I never could get Rhapsody to install, despite my system meeting the requirements. I think that a clean install of XP would solve that, but I since built a new machine and don’t need to bother with it. So you may want to try the upgrade path if you are concerned aboput keeping your old programs and settings, but be prepared to do a clean install if the machine still doesn’t do what you want to do. Then you would have to back up your files.
I’m happy that I upgraded to XP, even on such an old machine.
You might want to consider just buying a new machine. Yeah I know it’s more money, but you will get XP, a bigger hard drive, a CD-RW, and maybe a DVD for what $300-400? (excluding monitor) Looking at Dell I found a system for $579 including monitor, and they don’t have any big sales on right now.
It is something to think about.
Also will Win 2K do an upgade install?
Rick, thanks for the suggestion, but I don’t think I want to buy a new computer as a stopgap. I got the Windows 2000 REALLY cheaply, and I’d rather just overwrite, which it sounds OK to do (from the postings…THANKS, all).
When I decide to upgrade the machine, I want to get a nice powerful laptop, and I’m just not missing enough functionality yet to pull the trigger.
Good idea, though. A nice new laptop would be nice…too bad the wife’s an accountant!
I hope so. My Google-fu escapes me at the moment, but I think that most Win2k discs will do an upgrade. If not, I know some tricks that’ll work for sure.
Cemetery Savior: I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but one thing you’ll almost certainly need with Windows 2000 is more RAM. 128MB of RAM in Windows 2000 is somewhat usable, but 256 or 512MB is really where it’s at. Your computer is a P3, which almost certainly means that it uses PC100 RAM, which cost around $30/per 256MB stick. You’ll need to open up your PC’s case to see if you have any spare memory slots available - let me know if you need help with this.
Also, your P3 almost certainly also has USB 1 or 1.1. You will find this to be as slow as molasses for transferring music. A “real-world” example: I have an Archos AV400 portable video player, which is currently hooked up to my HDTV downstairs. Transferring a typical hour-long show to the player via USB2 on my upstairs PC takes less than a minute, but around 20 minutes on the P3 (USB1) PC downstairs - which would be much more convenient, as it saves a trip upstairs. This is for 450MB of data, so filling up a GB+ iPod would take hours) on a USB 1 PC. You can buy a USB 2.x PCI card for around $10 if your system has an available USB slot. For best results, install the card after the Windows 2000 upgrade.
Lastly - as has been mentioned - your system might have a smallish hard drive. Although you can spend $50-$200 on a larger drive for your system, it might be better to just get an external USB drive, as this will allow you to access the music from either your desktop or your future latop. Prices vary by capacity, but expect to spend at least $100 on one. Make sure it’s USB2 (99.999% of them are these days).
Oh, and does your wife work in an office? I ask 'cos you might wanna see if she has a friendly IT guy that would install all of the patches and whatnot for you using the office’s broadband account, as doing the same over dial-up will take days. I’ve been that IT guy in the past, and as long as I wasn’t too busy (and as long as the company had no explicit policy about working on non-company machines), I was usually happy to help with home machines… provided I liked you. Remember your grandma saying “no one is beneath you”? It’s true, especially of the IT crowd.
The important stuff is usually limited in size - documents, some pictures. Should fit on an iPod mini (4Gb?). Applications can typically be better freshly installed. Just make sure you still have the registration information for any software you may have purchased online.