Arrgh, Computers

The computer drama in our household seems to be never ending. I say "seems to be" because it is finally possible that there's some light at the end of the tunnel. I say "never ending" because we've been having computer difficulties since last October!

It all started with the purchase of a new laptop for John. Our old faithful Toshiba was getting a little quirky and we felt that it was only a matter of time. To preempt a horrific crash, we decided to purchase and pick up a new computer when John traveled out of the country. He brought it home . . .and immediately started having problems with it. It took almost a week to figure out how to get it to hook up to our wireless router. Then, the "blue screen of death" made frequent appearances, and John had troubles transferring files from the old to the new computer.

Finally, John was able to input our whole Outlook address book and begin using the computer for emails, and that lasted less than three days before the entire computer crashed. After many hours of work and searching (using Old Faithful as a backup), John finally figured out a way to retrieve the new information on the hard drive, despite the encryption we have on it, get the Dell people to give us a new hard drive, and then began the long and arduous work of completely reformatting and setting up the computer. Why "long and arduous"? Just because John didn't really know anything about setting up a computer, nor did he care about rebuilding it to exacting specifications . . .he just wanted a functioning computer! He was able to get most of the programs reinstalled but was still wary of it, and by this time it was late November and we were into the Christmas season with all of its busyness.

So, the new Dell pretty much got shelved for a bit. John was still using Old Faithful for emails, and so just kept on with it. Then, we felt that perhaps I should have a new computer too, so planned to buy one and pick it up when we were out of the country recently. That way, Old Faithful could be permanently retired and John could usually leave his computer at the office, and I would also be able to have a computer at home.

Finally, finally, finally after all this time, John had some time to sort and organize files on the old computer and try to transfer them to the new computer. Unfortunately he also ran into more difficulties due to several versions of Outlook existing on our old computer, but. . . it seems that MAYBE he is finally finished with that process! He had to go back through and manually delete thousands of emails that existed in triplicate (due to a crash and reinstallation back in 2005) before the program could be transferred.

John also got my new computer up and running and I even did a little personalizing last night--set the desktop photo, chose some photos for screen savers, etc. I'm enjoying not having to wait to use the computer! Nice!

Ok, so now my new project is to organize five years of photos that now were transferred to my new computer. They are somewhat organized by date of download, but not any more than that. Any suggestions, anyone? (Sandra, I'm calling your name!) Do I need to store my pictures online or just on my computer and external hard drive? Seriously, I would appreciate any advice any of you would like to give!

I feel a bit about computers like I used to feel about cars in the States: a necessary evil! They can take up lots of time if they're not working properly, but all you really want them for is to USE them--they are supposed to make life easier! I do hope and trust that all this work wasn't in vain and hopefully both of our new computers will prove themselves to be useful tools for a long, long time. Let's hope!