Monday, March 1, 2010

Dying Laptops For Dummies

That is the title of the book I most need to read right now. My Dell Inspiron is something like five years old now and has been done and re-done several times over the years. It is finally on its last *boo hoo* let and it is something akin to losing a right arm, I believe. I use this for my e-mail, social networking, Blogging, banking, bill paying, word proccessing, basic publishing and, perhaps, to me the most important -- picture storing. This has been a slow (well, not real slow, but slow enough, thank goodness) demise that started with slow running a while back. (The battery went out years ago and it has required a power cord ever since). Then, the power cord went out. Thankfully, I lucked into a free replacement. Next, it started sending itself into "standby" at random moments. About six weeks ago, the screen started jumping right in the middle, slightly to the right. And, finally, in the last two weeks that "jump" has progressed to most of the right side of the screen, most of the time (unless I'm holding it "just right" on my lap and have my mouth set right, I guess!) My biggest fear is losing those 1000s of pictures.

Glenn has for quite some time pointed out that this laptop won't last forever and that I need to consider some form of replacement. Well, about a week ago I placed an order for a netbook. THAT should be a post in and of itself. Let's just say that I seriously wonder if I will ever receive it! In the meantime, I ordered an external harddrive to back up my pictures to. It arrived today to Glenn's office and I was so excited to plug it in and start saving. I am NOT, let me repeat, NOT tech savvy with equipment. I can navigate the Internet and find information like no one's business, but ask me to plug a USB in and transfer files and it is an iffy situation. Needless to say, this particular harddrive came with built in "back up" software. I tried to download it and got an error message. (Let me add that the book that came with it is written in at least 10 languages and NONE of them explain how to install this program!!) When I open the "F:\" folder I see six or seven files that I don't recognize that have apparently jumped from my laptop over....I have no idea how I got them there, what they are and if I need to leave or delete. I opted to leave and attempt to move AT LEAST my picture files over.....they have been transferring now for about half an hour. Or, I think they have been transferring!

Keep your fingers crossed that this works!

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