Two days ago, my computer of about eight years finally gave up the ghost. I had left it running as I usually do during the day while we went out to dinner with our out-of-town guests, coming home to a totally black screen that wouldn't "wake up." This was an XP box that had served me well, and I was sad to see it go, but in the back of my mind, knew its time was limited.
I'd had the front two USB ports die on me about a year ago, cluing me in that the motherboard might be starting to go. Last year I bought a terabyte external drive to use to back the computer up, and indeed I did, but the last really good backup of everything on that C: drive was quite a few months ago.
I decided back last year to store all of my data on the new terabyte drive, a wise decision, as I really lost nothing in terms of pictures, music, and documents. The biggest loss that I discovered so far was a database of DVD movies called DVD Profiler.
That software keeps a list of all of the DVDs and Blu-Rays in my collection, and everything, including the backup was on that C: drive. The great thing about DVD Profiler is that you can upload the whole collection to an online site so you can check your collection from anywhere there's an Internet connection. So if you ever DO lose your local data, you can reconstruct it from the online site. Sort of a "cloud" backup, I suppose.
Well it turns out I was a bit lax lately, and hadn't uploaded the collection to the site since October 25th of last year. So I had to rescue the online data up to that point, and then recreate from memory what titles were added since then. Since it was over the Christmas season, I had a pretty good idea of what we'd added - I think I only missed one, using the old internal analog brain.
After doing that, since I was dealing with the subject, I elected to compare each title on the shelf with one in the database to try and catch any other anomalies that crept in over the years - something I hadn't done since before we moved. That exercise turned up a few surprising things like DVD's that had never been entered, and others that have been eliminated through duplication, upgrades, etc.
So this little project took just about a day's time, along with a few other odds and ends, like:
- Continuing to familiarize myself with Windows 7. It's got a lot of interesting differences from XP, some, IMHO, not necessary, others surprisingly nice.
- Getting my email in Windows Live Mail to work the way I want it to work.
- Getting some general Windows settings the way I want them to work.
- Hooking up my printer - I'd been using an old parallel connector with the old box, and thought I'd need an adapter, but it turns out that this printer has another connector port that goes to a USB computer port. I found a cable from another old unused component that works just fine.
- Rescuing some old software from the existing backup to see if it works in Win 7.
- Verifying that the optical drive is functioning, and that I can use it in ways that are familiar.
Thing's that are giving me fits right now:
- Trying to get Office XP to work under Win 7. Word and Excel run fine, but it's not letting me register the software online, so I may have to phone it in. It's telling me I've got 45 more uses left.
- Finding my way around new versions of familiar software, adding to the learning curve.
I loved the new computer's speed. It's an HP desktop, Intel Core i3-2130 processor, 6 GB RAM, and 1 terabyte hard drive. I didn't want a laptop or pad device, which seems to be all they're stocking these days. I'd just gotten a new monitor last year and didn't want to purchase another, so this fit in with the idea of a desktop tower.
But these kind of changes surely slow one down. Doing things that used to be nearly instantaneous because of one's familiarity with the software, now take those extra few minutes of reading menu structures, finding hidden functions, locating things on disk drives in unfamiliar locations, etc.
I'll get the hang of it eventually - I hope...
Harry
I'd had the front two USB ports die on me about a year ago, cluing me in that the motherboard might be starting to go. Last year I bought a terabyte external drive to use to back the computer up, and indeed I did, but the last really good backup of everything on that C: drive was quite a few months ago.
I decided back last year to store all of my data on the new terabyte drive, a wise decision, as I really lost nothing in terms of pictures, music, and documents. The biggest loss that I discovered so far was a database of DVD movies called DVD Profiler.
That software keeps a list of all of the DVDs and Blu-Rays in my collection, and everything, including the backup was on that C: drive. The great thing about DVD Profiler is that you can upload the whole collection to an online site so you can check your collection from anywhere there's an Internet connection. So if you ever DO lose your local data, you can reconstruct it from the online site. Sort of a "cloud" backup, I suppose.
Well it turns out I was a bit lax lately, and hadn't uploaded the collection to the site since October 25th of last year. So I had to rescue the online data up to that point, and then recreate from memory what titles were added since then. Since it was over the Christmas season, I had a pretty good idea of what we'd added - I think I only missed one, using the old internal analog brain.
After doing that, since I was dealing with the subject, I elected to compare each title on the shelf with one in the database to try and catch any other anomalies that crept in over the years - something I hadn't done since before we moved. That exercise turned up a few surprising things like DVD's that had never been entered, and others that have been eliminated through duplication, upgrades, etc.
So this little project took just about a day's time, along with a few other odds and ends, like:
- Continuing to familiarize myself with Windows 7. It's got a lot of interesting differences from XP, some, IMHO, not necessary, others surprisingly nice.
- Getting my email in Windows Live Mail to work the way I want it to work.
- Getting some general Windows settings the way I want them to work.
- Hooking up my printer - I'd been using an old parallel connector with the old box, and thought I'd need an adapter, but it turns out that this printer has another connector port that goes to a USB computer port. I found a cable from another old unused component that works just fine.
- Rescuing some old software from the existing backup to see if it works in Win 7.
- Verifying that the optical drive is functioning, and that I can use it in ways that are familiar.
Thing's that are giving me fits right now:
- Trying to get Office XP to work under Win 7. Word and Excel run fine, but it's not letting me register the software online, so I may have to phone it in. It's telling me I've got 45 more uses left.
- Finding my way around new versions of familiar software, adding to the learning curve.
I loved the new computer's speed. It's an HP desktop, Intel Core i3-2130 processor, 6 GB RAM, and 1 terabyte hard drive. I didn't want a laptop or pad device, which seems to be all they're stocking these days. I'd just gotten a new monitor last year and didn't want to purchase another, so this fit in with the idea of a desktop tower.
But these kind of changes surely slow one down. Doing things that used to be nearly instantaneous because of one's familiarity with the software, now take those extra few minutes of reading menu structures, finding hidden functions, locating things on disk drives in unfamiliar locations, etc.
I'll get the hang of it eventually - I hope...
Harry
Encryption I want even on my main computer, in the event it is ever stolen or compromised. For laptops, I am wondering if someone makes a remote program like they do for my smartphone--if it is stolen, a simple command could completely erase the contents of the laptop (the moment it connects to the Internet, of course).
