New Computer 2

MIDNIGHT:  Well, the new PC arrived last night, but I can't do anything with it yet.  What always happens with a new computer?  The existing monitor  plug is wrong...    There WAS just time to rush out to a local store to buy a new one, but I was up all night struggling with Verizon and AOL about the email on the old Mac and wanted a clear head about the new monitor, so I'm waiting til morning to go shopping for one.

I'll keep updating here as things progress.  Meanwhile, I can respond to any comments here, but my email seems shot.  Verizon points to AOL, AOL points to Verizon, and both say I need to talk to Apple about my email.

So I'm catching up on sleep tonight.

11:15 Wed:  I slept for 14 hours.  I needed it.  But that got me up late so I got a late start getting the new PC set up.  I had to go out to buy a cable adaptor.  My 2 existing monitors are VGA and I needed an adaptor from VGA to HDMI.  $30!  Ouch.

And when I got home, I was so hungry not eating much yesterday and sleeping 14 hours, I ate for 3 hours.  I minced roast beef, bell peppers, onion, and mushrooms, simmered it all in canned tomatoes and served it over noodles.  Then I ate an apple, several stalks of celery, saltines, ritz crackers with cheese, and sat down to watch the news on MSNBC.

Then I disassembled the old Mac and set up the new PC.  I'll set the Mac up on a card table temporarily, as I'll need it working to copy files to the PC using a flash drive.  I read through "getting started" on the PC.  No big surprises there, but the display and icons have all changed and that takes some getting used to.

The PC REALLY wants me to use the Cloud, but I'm not ready for that.  I did get The new MS browser  (Edge) opened, so the first thing I did was open my blogger account.  Hence this update...

I'm annoyed about apps.  I thought there was Office included with Windows 10 Home version, but apparently not.  I can open Word, but it says it is a trial version only good for 5 days. I'm searched around the File Manager and it really does seem true that there are no bundled apps for Word or Excel.  Or pretty much everything else.  

There IS a mail program, but since my mail wasn't working on the Mac, I doubt I have the settings and passwords to make it work on the PC  (other than receiving emails at cavebear2118@verizon.net).  I'll worry about that tomorrow. 

So I think I will go shopping for PC software at Amazon.  I could download it from the Windows store online, but I want CDs to start with.  I expect to have some problems and it is a LOT easier to reload software from a CD than from a download file.

Tomorrow morning, I'll set up the old Mac on the card table and I THINK it has a wireless feature that won't require me to keep moving the router cable back and forth.  If it doesn't, my Mac laptop DOES and I can connect my external backup drive to that and access most of the files I want to transfer. 

So, a-shopping I will go...

1 AM Thurs:  Well, it seems I can't get Windows software on CD any more.  It is all download.  And I need a working email, which is not set up on the PC yet.  That's a real Catch 22.  I cant get the AOL email working fully on The old Mac, so I can't set it up on the PC yet and that means I can't download software for the other things I want to do. 

7 AM Thurs:    Got the Windows Office software to work with the help of an Amazon tech rep at about 4 AM.  Word and Excel are now working.  Went researching photo management software next.  That was confusing.  I wanted Picasa, but that seems to have died.  Google software seems to want to use only the Cloud, and I don't like that.  I finally went for Corel Paintshop Pro x9.  The difference between the Home version and pro was only $10, so whay not?  The surprise, after all the software that only sends downloads, is that Corel actually sends I CD.  I will receive it Saturday. 

So that leaves the email as the last major thing to get working.  And my recent experience suggests I want to talk to REAL AOL techs not foreign call centers. 

And I might decide to just stay with AOL for a while.  Poor as it is, it DOES work for my cavebear2119@verizon.net address and I am thinking I might not want to risk messing THAT one up.  I got into the habit of saving all my emails for a decade because it was so easy on my Mac email.  But I deleted 95% of them, preparing to migrate them and I'm not sure I needed most of those.  I saved the emails from several people I actually email back and forth, and I have them on my Mac computer which is up and running again so far as reading old emails goes. Maybe I needed to delete all those forwarded comments anyway.  They ARE still on the blogs. 

But I DO need to get a better email than AOL.  It sucks.  I have 35 minutes before AOL techs are available, so I think I'll see what I can learn about the installed  Windows email until then...

9:15 AM - I THINK I got an AOL tech rep who solved the email problems.  It WAS confusing at first because what Verizon considered a primary account and 3 subaccount emails, AOL just considers 3 primary email accounts. We got through that eventually.  It seems to me right now that all my 3 email addresses are working.  Who knows what might happen tomorrow.  But for now, all seems good.  AOL wants $5 per month per email account for full tech support. 

I can afford it, but I also find it offensive since Verizon said the migration would be free and they weren't charging me for either tech support or the 3 email accounts.  I'm going to let that slide for now.  It's by the month, so I'm not locked in for a year, and  so a couple months of that won't kill me. 

So now, I have MS Office working, email working, and am waiting for 2 days for the Corel photo
manager software to arrive Saturday. 

Which means I am free to start arranging File Manager to migrate my documents to.  That should only take a few hours (he said while laughing confidently) , but I will hope for the best.

My next effort is setting up File Manager to accept specific folders of files from the Mac. 

I feel awake enough to transfer files.  The question is whether Windows File Manager will let me set uop subfolders in a way I like.  We'll soon finf out.