Posted on 01/01/2002 4:11:47 PM PST by mercy
It sorta just snuck up on me. My old nanao monitor started winking at me, the ole gal felt like dropping by Comp USA and the next thing I know I'm rolling out the door with a new VAIO tower, a Samsung syncMaster flat screen LCD and a Canon bubble jet (there goes my buy American bluster).
I wasn't going to do it. Really. The thought of venturing past my garden path was too scary. The ole Dell XPS 200 and windows 95 was so .... well, familliar. I was afraid taking the leap would be just too painful. Boy was I wrong. Mama was in the mood to spend money and ya just can't go against that flow. Might not happen again in a coon's age.
Been hearing not so good things about Dell and the prices have been plunging so that one has to wonder about what they're putting in those things these days. Besides I wanted the security of just being able to walk the box into the service dept. if I had a prob and actually getting the thing back in days rather than weeks. The Sony seemed like a solid machine and not a conglomeration of god knows whose parts. The flat screen just knocked my eyes out. XP made my old OS look like a cheep 40's cartoon. So I jumped.
Despite my desire to get in a dig at Bill Gates whenever possible I'm going with 'internet exploder' for now. doesn't seem so bad and I'm not really missing Netscape ... yet. (I may pinch him a bit by dropping Office and going with Corel) I haven't had any trouble with XP whatsoever. I've deleted some junk they had in the box and I've added several programs. I'm all over the net and not a glitch. ON THE FIRST DAY. I can't believe I waited so long. I love the whole package. AND for some unknowable (for me) reason my internet connection is chunking along at twice the speed of before though my dialup connection is the same lame ole 28k and I already had a new top line modem in the ole box. Go figure.
So if any of y'all out there are like me and afraid of the change .... don't be. It's wonderful.
I like the Sony VAIO computers, too. A little pricey, but good machines. And you'll LOVE the flat panel monitor. SO much easier on the eyes.
MM
For three years, I have been running a 400MHz box with 128MB of RAM, a 13Gig hard drive and Windows98. Despite Windows crashing several times a day, I learned to live with it and used the rebooting time to grab myself another beer out of the refrigerator. See, I got locked into a "comfort zone." Had no intention of buying a new PC and in fact, was contemplating buying a bigger hard drive and keeping the PC running for another year.
Well this new PC is utterly mindblowing. For less than half the price I paid for my old computer (which was top-of-the-line at the time), I got a 1.7GHz processer with 512MB of RAM and a 80Gig hard drive. Furthermore, it has a CD-RW drive, a DVD drive, six USB ports including two on the space-age keyboard, firewire ports all over the place and a network card built in. Oh yeah, and it has this optical mouse as well that doesn't need a mousepad. It took me maybe five minutes to learn how to burn a CD and I have no idea how I lived without the ability to burn my own CDs!
When I brought it home, XP immediately recognized my monitor and printer and installed the proper drivers for them. It automatically recognized my home network, configured my Internet connection and prompted me to make a floppy so that the other PC could share the Internet connection!
Most importantly, I've had this PC running for about a week now and it hasn't crashed once. Hasn't even shown a hint of crashing. This Windows XP is rock solid. In fact, I'm probably going to run out and get a copy of XP for my old computer as well.
I've been building my own computers for the past seven years. This is my first pre-built computer since my big mistake with a Packard-Bell back in 1995. Computers have come a long way since I built my last system three years ago. If you are on the fence of upgrading, the deals have never been better and the difference between a modern PC and one of two or three years ago is phenomenal.
Yes, you can transfer the stuff easily. First go to IE on the old computer and export your bookmarks to floppy or CDR. Then put the disk in the new machine, open IE and import the files. (all under the file menu of IE). The one big difference with ie 6 is that you can't put your links directly on the toolbar (at least as far as I can tell) so you have to put them in a folder called 'links' inside your favorites folder. They will appear on a drop down menu on ie6
Can't stress enough the importance of those patches!!!
I use Win ME and learned that UPnP is installed also...it's been there, but the Manufacturer had the option of turning it on...Mine apparantly did. Sooo...I installed Black Ice.
Interesting, the majority of scans now are HTTP attacks looking for the XP security hole. Six months ago, they were Net scans looking for already installed Trojans/Spyware.
*Rolling my eyes*
Lame, friend, totally lame!
Anyway, everytime my wife cuts her computer off and back on the clock displays the wrong time. We've tried resetting it and setting it to update via internet, checked proper time zones etc- no dice.
The other thing: The little icon on the tray that shows you're connected to the internet has gone missing. When my wife's finished surfing she can't figure out how to disconnect and she has to let it time out or shut down. Can anybody tell me how to get that little icon back and how to get the clock to show the proper time and date?
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