Computers: To ship or not to ship

Swapping out the hard drive is an easy way to transfer to a new system without having to spend hours setting up everything just the way you like it.  You'll still need to make changes to account for any new/altered hardware, e.g. install appropriate drivers for printers, display adapters, etc.

Before removing the drive to ship it, make backup copies of any essential data, just in case.
 

Brought my computer with me, backed up the hard drive but didn't re,ove it as Dell likes to make it extremely difficult to remove your hard drive. I've purchased a new monitor which shoudl get here Monday but in the meantime I hooked my computer up to someone else's monitor to make sure it was okay. Everything is fine....definitely worth the $100 excess baggage fee to bring it with me.

See my comment in "Bringing a computer" discussion.