Monday, November 09, 2009
computer graveyard
I decided to concede and use J's computer today. I was going mad with being computer-less, what with now not one but two internet connections running through my house.We recently acquired ourselves an M1 broadband subscription, getting the free laptop and printer-scanner in the deal. Our Starhub connection is ending next week. Hence the current two-internet-connections scenario.
Meanwhile, the new laptop is taking ages to arrive.
My computer table is now like a graveyard, with wires strewn all over, hardware and accessories without a proper home.
J's laptop is fine for simple things like emailing and text based surfing, but is really slow when it comes to photos and flash related programmes. I seriously wondered how he used to play WoW on this laptop. He probably lagged like crazy.
And the keyboard is really grimy looking. I feel itchy using it. I think it is a male thing, to have dirty keyboards.
That and the fact that there are all sorts of error pop-up messages everytime the computer starts. And that there is no Firefox on it. I don't know how to use the internet without Firefox.
Hence this blog post has no hyperlinks et cetera. It is too much work to do this on J-Lap.
As for what really happened to my old computer: the PSU fried, possibly due to my youngest cat going behind the CPU. That and the fact that it has been working very hard, for long days and nights. The PSU's breaking down also destroyed part of the motherboard and the processor, which unfortunately for me was AMD from when it was still better than Pentium. Not anymore. Hence, we had to decommission the computer. The only workable parts were everything else, which are also quite obsolete. A cooling-fan, anyone?
My data is hopefully saved - my photos, music and documents. The guy at the IT shop in my neighbourhood saved our hard-disks for us, but J dropped them along the way home as the plastic bag broke. I am not sure if the data is still intact. Either way the IT guy said he would use the old hard-disks as a partition on our new computer when we finally get enough money to fund the building of it. In the meantime, it is a no-go financially so we are going to have to try and get by on the current situation. The computer lasted about four years and was a gift from H from the days when we had our home-office in my place. It has had a good life.
While I am going mad waiting for my new laptop and hopefully resurrecting my old data to use alongside it, I relented today as I was going crazy without being able to use a computer to blog or email for the past few days. I did fine initially, turning to reading in bed instead of being perched at my computer desk. But today something snapped as I had too many words in my brain that I needed to get out.
I will not however be using J's laptop to update my cat blog as that blog is picture heavy, something that J-Lap will not be able to sustain. Sending one jpeg file using this computer already takes ages. J-Lap somewhat reminds me of my first Windows 98 laptop. One that I used from 2000 to 2004.
I am not sure how fast the new laptop will be. But it is a mini one, the kind that costs very little and is meant for basic functions. I will have to resurrect my old portable hard-disks to use alongside it to store my entire cache of documents. But the great thing is that I will be able to use it in bed. What other bliss is there apart from typing and surfing the net lying down?
The good thing out of the dying of my computer is that J-Lap now has a new monitor. J hates using his laptop without an external flat-screen monitor. His died a while back. Now, since my desktop has been decommissioned, he took over the monitor upon my advice. Not that it makes any difference, the graphics loading on J-lap is slow enough to make light of the wonders of wide-screen LCD.
Another good thing out of my computer dying is that I could try to detox myself of blogging. I started Twittering instead (is that the word?) as I could do that easily on my handphone and there are no major lag-causing graphics on my Twitter pages that will test my patience. Find me on Twitter @avalon and @ubikuching.
Okay, now with some words out of the way I shall resume my computer-fast. After I wash my hands because my fingers feel a little itchy...