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Computers have occupied my time of the last few days. It all started while I was reading my e-mail. The computer froze. No problem, I thought, I will just restart. However, the computer did not restart. I tried everything, at least everything I knew. The computer did not restart. When I finally inserted and ran the Apple Hardware Test CD, the problem was immediately apparent, "No Devices Found". This was bad. This was 6:00 a.m. in the morning. One thing I have always done, when purchasing a new Apple Computer, has been to pay for the extended warranty. The AppleCare support telephones did not begin taking calls until 9:00 a.m. It was a three-hour wait for confirmation that I had a serious hardware problem. With my AppleCare case ID number in hand, I called a local Apple authorized dealer. Luckily, this particular company has a very competent and personable young man, Andy, who fixes computers. Their sales staff are another story. I find that I only have to describe the problem to Andy once. He gets it. Then he fixes it. It was bad. It was very bad. The CPU had died. This is an expensive problem. The part is worth $1510.00. Thanks to the extended warranty, the final bill was zero. The computer was gone and back again within twenty-four hours. Andy is a special person. The mistake I made was that I did not grab my computer and run out the door. Feeling euphoric, standing in a room surrounded by desirable hardware and software, I could not resist the sirens of commerce. I just had to spend some of the money I had just "saved". So you see, this is how I came to install a new operating system on Marjory. It took two days to backup the entire hard drive. It took another half-day to defrag the drive/partitions, check everything for virus infections, and rebuild all the desktops. It was not until yesterday morning that I was finally ready to install OSX (Jaguar). It was surprisingly simple, and worked unattended while I did interesting things like the breakfast dishes. Any new operating system requires fine-tuning so that things work as they should. This is the part of computing that I enjoy the most. One can spend happy hours choosing a background image, starting up new programs for the first time, and hooking up gadgets such as the digital camera. Most of the programs I use can be upgraded for OSX at no cost. Those upgrades with price tags attached will have to wait for another time; but the old versions function perfectly in OS 9, which is still installed on Marjory. After a very short training session, the dictation software is proving to be a big success. It works so well, that I am telling myself that the advantages justify the expense. That is what I tell myself. I believe me... Life is a tautology. |
RECIPES :: Cast Worldly Distractions  Season's Bounty By the Easy Chair Relics of a Lost Civilization by Chen Shen Rotunda Summer/Fall 2002 Quote "Give me enough that I can do something, but not enough that you care what it is." Steve Smith of Red Green, 2002 Weather 18:59 EDT Temp: 20`C Humidity: 78% Wind: S 11 km/h Barometric:102.1 kPa Sunrise 7:19 AM EDT Sunset 7:09 PM EDT |
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