And I'm Back

Well, after the computer had been in a computer workshop for a week and a half it became clear that even if they got it running it would no longer do everything we want of it. So I bought a new one. And that's when the fun began.

Up to now any computer I've bought has been put together by the Stepson who is exceptionally good with computers, despite being a History graduate. He, of course, is currently at Cambridge so I had to try to put it all together on my own. He would probably have had it working in about 15 minutes. Faced with all the hardware and a tangle of wires and plugs and feeling very nervous I decided to aproach the problem like knitting an extremely complex Aran pattern, bit by bit. Slowly (OK then, very, very slowly) it all came together.

Then I had to go on to stage 2 of the process of getting the computer working - adding all the essential software as it came with just Windows and a few totally unnecessary free programmes. So I added the software (and hardware) for Broadband access, Internet Security, the printer's system, anti-spyware, Adobe reader, IE7, Webshots, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, iTunes and 27 already purchased audio books that were on the C drive of my old computer and needed to be re-downloaded. I'm sure there were other things I did yesterday but these are the things that really stuck in my memory.

Luckily all the e-mails that were sent to me while the old computer was off-line arrived once I had set the new one up, as they's all been sitting in a "pot" held by my ISP. There was over 1,300 of them, although a huge number of them were Spam or otherwise unnecessary. Is everyone drowning in Spam, as I am? Fortunately my Internet Security software has an Anti-Spam facility. It has a "learning facility" or something and the sooner it learns what is Spam the better.

It's odd though. At work I had internet access within a few months of it becoming promoted generally to the world. At home I've had a home computer with internet access for something like 10 years. But that isn't really a long time when you take into account my life-span generally. But I was staggered how much I missed having access to the internet. I look at many sites during the day as well as reading lots of e-mails and I missed having access to friends and family. Also not having access to Word became a problem as well. It's odd how computers and internet access has become significant to life generally, at least to that part of the world capable of affording it.

Anyway I hope that at least now I will have a relaible computer system after having one that played up quite regularly. Now life can return to an even keel, at least until some time in January when I will probably move to a new ISP.