It's a Love/Hate Relationship

...With my computer, that is! I love my computer when it is working--but when it's not working, the word (H A T E) comes to mind.

Just as I was ready to start marketing my site, my computer died. I saw it coming for the past month: it was getting slower and slower at bringing up programs, it would freeze and I'd have to restart, the CD-rom kept popping out for no apparent reason and it would take up to 10 times of pushing it back in before it would stay. My productivity was going way down, and my frustration was going way up.

My husband started looking for computers for me almost 2 weeks ago. But, the frugal one that I am, told him to hold off--I was going to save my 4-year old computer, and make it last at least a couple more years. I first went through the adware fixes and used McAfee to be sure I didn't have a virus. But that still didn't improve performance. It got so bad that I backed up all important documents and then reinstalled my operating system.

However, my operating system reinstalled next to, not over my old one. I wanted to totally get rid of whatever was causing the problems. So it took another day and a phone call to an expert to get it installed properly.

OK—I’m Ready to start again with a totally clean slate on my computer. I plugged in our DSL modem and installed the software. After a few problems I got it up and working! --for 2 hours that is. Then it began to act schizophrenic!-- IM would work, but IE wouldn't. I'd get on the phone with tech support and then all the sudden, it would work before they did anything. (No, I'm not really calling because I just want to talk to someone!! It really wouldn't work 2 minutes ago!)

Then my computer just shut down randomly. Even with the newly installed operating system!

That's it! After spending 3 days trying to get my computer working, unsuccessfully, I admitted my husband was right. I did need a new computer. That's what it takes--Days of frustration and non-productivity to allow myself to spend $800.

It took half a day of shopping around to find one that was a good deal and would fit my needs now and for the future. I guess I could have gone online to Dell, but every day without a computer meant no work. No moving forward. (Isn't that funny--it is hard to think of life without my computer!!)

Our challenge now is getting my extra internal drive, with all my important data to fit into the new computer. The new computer uses ATA connections for the drives, not serial, which is what my extra drive has, of course. So we purchased an ATA converter, but the drive doesn’t show up as having data on it.

My husband is at the computer store with the computer, drive, ATA converter, etc. trying to find a solution. I thank him for sharing in my frustration. I'll let you know how it turns out. I'm wishing for a happy ending!