What is it about these hunks of chips and plastic that so controls our lives? I should amend by saying "some of our lives." My wife would certainly argue that the computer controls my life. And my sons have long accused me of putting them below dogs, computers, and other animate and inanimate objects on the "what I love best" scale. What can I say? I use my computer for hours every day. I keep up with the news, I do my baseball stuff, email, and I do a great deal of my work--research and writing--right here at the keyboard. I'm sorry, the Net is an information junky's fix, and I readily admit I'm hopelessly hooked.
I type this on a new computer. Not because I wanted a new computer. Who actually enjoys the myriad hassles of getting a new computer up to speed, as much like the old computer as possible? Only the veriest geek could enjoy such a thing. It's hours of labor, and no matter how diligent you are, you are never going to get things back like they were before. Everybody knows, everybody who uses their computer a lot I should say, that you constantly fiddle with this or that setting, this or that sequence, this or that look to always have the computer doing exactly what you want it to. During the course of a computer's life, let's say 4-5 years, you download countless programs, you make just as many little adjustments here and there. When a computer crashes, all of this is lost.
I actually have been able to recover more speedily this time than last, although I'm not finished yet; I'm just functional. Quicker because I was able to salvage the hard drive out of my old computer and connect it to this one. Didn't even know such a thing was possible. Which means the recovery went a lot faster. But everything is not the same, of course. The new computer, an HP, is a 64-bit machine. Don't ask me what that means, but it does mean that you simply don't have a load-old-onto-new situation. The process has been fraught with all kinds of unexpected little glitches. Nothing earth-shaking, but the annoyance factor rises with as the sum of little glitches increases. Nonetheless, the closer I get to getting everything loaded back on and resuming a more-or-less "normal" course with the computer, the lower my anxiety level. The woe of the past few days, brothers and sisters, is lifting.
2 comments:
I did not know you were having difficulty. Sorry to hear that, and glad you are getting up and running again.
Bought my youngest daughter a Dell laptop 2 years ago which came loaded with Windows Vista 64-bit. About to upgrade it to Windows 7, 32-bit. Some of the pre-installed software on the machine wouldn't even run on the 64-bit OS, if you can believe that! I hate it.
Everything is OK now. Still a glitch or two remaining to be ironed out. My new HP runs Win7 64-bit. I can certainly believe what you say about inability to run stuff. Are you ready for this? Hard drive now has two virtually identical "Programs" folders. For 32- and 64-bit. Don't ask me to explain further.
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