There is likely to be a certain amount of irregularity in posting for a little while.
The reason is we made the plunge yesterday and Jim went out and purchased a brand new iMac Apple OS X with a 20″ flat screen monitor. I’d post a picture but I haven’t figured out how to operate iPhoto just yet.
Ironically, the slowness, balkiness and constant crashing of the old computer was what precipitated this purchase. We hoped to get a new computer into the house before the old one died completely. It was still functional, barely, when the new computer arrived on the premises.
Jim also bought an external hard drive, the idea being that you could hook that up to the old computer, download the thousands of picture files onto it and thus easily transfer them to the new machine. Ha ha ha, what a little joke on us.
Our old computer refused to communicate with the new external hard drive. “What hard drive are you talking about?” it whined. “I sense no external hard drive, and even if I did I couldn’t possibly talk to it.”
Not only that, but when Jim decided that he would simply load discs into the disc drive and copy data to them, the hard drive in the old computer just ceased to function at all. We sadly arrived at the conclusion that we might have to invest in data recovery services.
Fortunately, this morning Jim moved the old computer into the back room where it was not in a face to face confrontation with the new sexy beast (as azahar is wont to refer to electronics). It grudgingly has accommodated his requests for data transfer to discs, although it still maintains it cannot do anything that has to do with an external hard drive.
I believe that when faced with the big box containing its replacement, the old computer’s feelings were hurt and it threw a tantrum. This morning I heard Jim telling it that if it cooperated and decided to function, it had a new home waiting for it at his brother’s place where there is a kid who needs a computer that can be dedicated to his favorite computer game, or some such.
Just a new life of nothing hard, no crunching numbers, no manipulating photos, just fun and games and long periods of rest while the kid is at school. Now what computer wouldn’t love that?
Meanwhile, I have a new system to become acquainted with — this is our first MacIntosh. Right now I am wondering why the little photo icon is bouncing at me. It reminds me of Ruby when she things I should be throwing the ball rather than stupidly and boringly pulling weeds.
How cool! A new computer always makes hours of fun!
Don’t worry, iPhoto is really easy. I’ve been (somewhat haphazardly) transferring my iPhoto library onto my Flickr account using Flickr Uploadr, which is also dead easy. Just drag the photos and hit “upload”! I figured Flickr won’t be going anywhere soon, so I have a web-based archive that way.
We were Mac users way back in the mid-90′s, then hubby worked for a PC manufacturer, so we went over to the dark side for a while, but now we’re all Mac around here. I think they’re very easy to use, and pretty much virus-free (since hackers can’t be bothered writing viruses for such a small market, evidently). Right now we have an iPod, a MacBook, and iBook, and a Mini. Once I got this iBook (for free!) we consigned the Mini to being a glorified DVD player.
Hopefully your old PC will understand it is being given a reprieve from the recycle bin!
Mac…. don’t use foul words, mylady, please. Macs are evil beings designed to put you into the nearest asylum.
I never got the hang of Macs. I’ve been surrounded by them the last ten years or so, but we’ve never seriously been on speaking terms. Not even network wise, where they in general refuse to show up, and especially they hide printers.
Some six years ago #1 persuaded me to buy a Mac G4 with a lot of gadgets. He got it VERY cheap a year later. (which probably was his cunning plan all the time
) I was content with my old laptop for two years before I got a new PC – still with a lot of unnecessary gadgets #1 convinced me we needed.
This one also drives me nuts from time to time. However, so far I managed to tame it.
Re transferring the data – you may possibly be able to (or get someone to) take the hard disk out of the old machine and connect it you your new SB while you do the transfer.
If it is worth the effort
Hi BBJP! I think that what you are suggesting was the thing that made Jim say we might have to pay for data recovery. For now, the old computer seems to be cooperating minimally in getting the data off it. Unfortunately, some of those were lost completely, or you can’t open them now. Mostly they are files that we can stand to have gone. As far as other data in the old computer, we do have a recent backup disk for Quicken, so at least we don’t have to worry about extracting that data. The rest of the stuff probably isn’t that important.
Well, except for our email information. We have not been able to access the address book on our email and that is probably going to cause us some heartburn.
Dragonqueen, I totally sympathize with being driven nuts by computers. I do not really understand them at all, I just love the way they can be such excellent tools for communication. They have made my life very easy in terms of balancing the checkbook, filing our taxes has become much less stressful, etc etc.
But I would never claim to have any expertise with them, and as far as I can tell, the only difference between the PC we did have and the Mac we now have is that they Mac works. I know nothing about any of the keyboard controls that Mac has made available for commands, pointing and clicking seems to work just fine. Plus it is a heckuva lot faster than the old PC. I have never in my life had to deal with any computer that was engaged in a network or done anything more complicated than basic home finance and word processing. I imagine that I might have a different attitude
“the new sexy beast (as azahar is wont to refer to electronics)”
Only my sexy laptop. My old desktop is called the Jaguar, my iPod is Nero, the digital camera is Holly … if I ever get that fabulous all-in-one computer you linked to I shall call it Jupiter.
I’ve always found Macs confusing too, dq, though I’ve never actually spent enough time on one to get comfortable with it.
Your external hard drive will be good for doing back-ups, so you’ll never have to worry about losing data again. I plug mine in about once a week and just sit back while it updates everything. Easy peasy.
Can’t wait to see a photo of your new beast!
azahar, I guess I was simplifying too much. I was in a hurry when I wrote that post. I am still amazed at the apparent sentience of electronics.
I may post a photo of the new beast as soon as I figure out how to work iPhoto. . . Plus, I’ll have to clean the desk up. Right now it is littered with disks from the data trasnfer operation as well as being EXTREMELY dusty since I have been working in the garden instead of in the house.
is it still called anthropomorphisising if it’s an inanimate object? whatever – very funny tale. I found myself empathising with your poor old soon to be replaced computer
my husband uses both PC and MACs (the music world uses MACs alot). He’s the only person I know who likes Vista – says it works sort of like a MAC so it hasn’t completely put him off at all. Meanwhile, I’ve used Vista at a gallery – or tired, anyway, and couldn’t figure how to email my email (it kept getting trapped). Surely computers are not for the faint of heart. Just as I like to get in a car and have it go, I like to sit down at my computer and just type. I reserve husband (who joined computing about 10 years after me and has left me in the dust) or daughter who has been tech person for the school system (she’s back in the class room – likes real little beings vs cyberspace)……
oooooooooh, I love my macs – wouldn’t change back to a pc now if I were paid to.
If anything bounces at you on the new mac, just click on it and it’ll tell you what it wants – its all so easy and intuitive I find.
And they don’t crash, or get viruses.
ahhh, you’re going to have such fun!
I am sure you will love your new ‘beast’ (I have known macs for as long as they have existed – since 1984 – and have never been very friendly with them, the key word that puts me off being ‘proprietary’), and I am sure the change was totally justified by the old computer’s obnoxious attitude, but I beg you find a new home for the old computer (and possibly a salvaged hard drive to replace the dying one, and a memory chip to give it a new breath). Maybe it’s the green geek in me, but I am often saddened when I see perfectly fine hardware being dumped because of a corrupted system, a small software glitch or just one faulty component.
People do not replace cars when they have a flat tire, but computers have become so complex and so cheap that there are few incentives to really take the time to figure out what the real problem is when something is not quite right. Unless it’s been fried by lightning, there is almost never a reason to say “it’s broken”. That does not mean one should not change to a new computer, only that one should always find a recipient (in our case : schools and associations) for retired computers.
And predictably, just like passionate mechanics with rusting Dodges and Buicks in the backyard, we are starting to stockpile old computer parts just in case we might save machines from the dump.
Oh, Mandarine. The computer seems to have come to terms with the fact that it is being replaced. It does have a new home to go to, up at Jim’s brother’s place in Iowa for a high schooler to use for homework, etc. Please believe me when I say that we are very green here. We have not thrown a computer away since we got rid of the first one back in 1984, and we weren’t going to throw this one away. Aside from the pollutants, I just can’t bring myself to throw away all that gold and platinum.
The computer is still hooked up and sitting on the floor in the back room as Jim attempts to recover more data from it. We gave up on trying to retrieve our email address list, but have been able to rebuild it somewhat.
I think that part of the reason we sprang for the Mac rather than another PC is that all the Pcs are now coming equipped with Windows Vista, which apparently is a real piece of crap software, plus Microsoft has decided not to “support” Windows XP any longer, apparently in a move to force people to accept the crap they are putting out instead. Why is this better than “proprietary”? (I’m not sure what that means in this context, actually).
Additionally, I also have to say that I’m not exactly sure what your definition of cheap is, but this computer was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. However, since by all reports the Mac tends to keep on going and going and going, we feel that the cost will be amortized over the following years by not having to invest in another one.
The writing has been on the wall for the old computer for quite some time. It has been suffering from some sort of corruption or software glitch for several months; and we (for that , read Jim) have screwed around with it patiently for some time. I have to admit that probably my screams of outrage and attempts at patient sighs probably motivated Jim to get another machine more than anything else. I am the first to admit that I am not any sort of techie or geek. I am a user, and not even a very expert user, either. I relate to my computer the same way I relate to my washing machine. I know how to put data into it and take it out, like I put clothes in and take them out. What happens in between is a mystery to me and if something goes wrong I know darn well I should yell “Help!” and not attempt to fix it myself.
Lightning is a real issue here, which is why we have a huge surge protector power supply lurking under the desk. Even the phone line goes through it.
You are right about the gold and platinum. Too bad we have slaughtered most gullible natives everywhere on Earth now: two centuries ago, we could have traded mainboards and network cards as breastplates and barrettes against pelts and gems.