Arrrghhhhh - New Computer!

The old computer died, never quite sure what it was dying of until the end and, yes, it was the hard disk dying. But some other things had gone bad too like the sound system but that turned out to be the old speaker set up. The old speaker set up dates from Argyle and was pushing 10 years of use, carpped out the other day.

Got a new Dell, it is spiffy but . . . Yes, the ever present but. The but is Vista, crappy software by Microsoft. I find it arrogant. Presumptuous solitaire, a defrag program that only lets you know it is running by a silly little circle turning round and round. The old defrag program had graffs, colors and shows what percentage is complete and so on. Not this one, just a silly little circle turning round and round like it is loading a program.

I guess I will get used to Vista but I surely do not like it. To much change from the old expected norm.

And Vista does not recognize my WiFi card, gives me a code 10 error. Yes, I checked on the Internet and it seems to be a common problem. NetGear makes the card and says they are compatible, but it don't work. One of the forums users said that he removed two giga bytes of memory from his motherboard and all was happy at that poi int. That harks back to a problem I had loading Windows 98 in Arglye. It was the Internet forums that gave the way to load Windows 98, remove one of the two sticks of D RAM. When I did that, Windows 98 loaded up without crashing. Then I reinstalled the memory stick and everything was okay. I suppose it had to do with some memory location assignment. Told Microsoft about it then and they said for $75 an hour they would fix it. I said shove it, I got it to work without your help. All I am trying to do was provide some help to Microsoft and you want me to pay you to fix your program? Get serious!

So I am connected to the Internet via a ethernet cord from the DSL modem to the Dell. That works but that is not the objective. The objective is to go wireless. Later today I will try the memory thing and see if it works. That will be interesting if it does. AndI do not want to pay for another WiFi receiver card of different origin to fix the problem, the old one worked with XP why wont the card work with Vista. Answer - Microsoft - stupid!

Meanwhile, the antivirus has been moved over to the Dell and it works. But I can not get my backup disk to restore all my other stuff. That is BounceBack and it has always been screwy. Sent them a message, we will see what I get back.

Had to get some new speakers. Got a cheapo set up from Wal-Mart. Wires so short I had to set the speakers up under the desk so that all could be connected. But it works, really does not matter where the sound originates as long as it works, right?

I am thinking I will have to try to set up the old computer one more time to transfer data over to the new one. Got to give that some considerations to how and when to do it.

The new Dell is smaller, more compact. Big hard disk - 500 Giga bytes. Seems to have a smaller back up disk - could be just a partition, don't know. There is a device that looks like it may be a small back up disk in the Dell. And the Dell has all these new cables, not ribbon cables connecting things. There seems to be one ribbon cable slot and I will install the floppy there. There is provisions for a floppy on the front and yet another empty bay. There are two PCI slots (one being used by the NetGear Card).

So it is not Dell's fault but they are the ones that put this crappy software on it. Maybe they have an answer, I will ask.