The Trials of Replacing the Home Office Computer

The "honey-do" list at home has expanded beyond belief. I spent much of yesterday morning planning home repairs. My partner was off work and he helped a lot. We spent much of the time acquiring materials from various building supplies retailers. Then it got so hot and oppressively humid, we retreated to the basement to keep cool.

I finally admitted to myself that my 8-year-old Gateway desktop computer had seen better days, when it took me better than an hour to get that thing working yesterday. I also have a laptop, from which I am writing. The Gateway performed well, but has become so slow and bogged down, and uses outdated software no longer supported that my partner offered to go "half-sies" with me on buying a replacement.

Man, it used to be fun to shop around for a computer, but nowadays, the systems are so complex and the options are so many from which to choose, it's mind-boggling. I think I figured it out... and then spent about an hour hunting for coupons and other money-saving options. I was able to save about $100 by finding those coupons, so it was worth the effort, though exhausting.

Ahhh... the good old days before the internet, and using MS-DOS, ... not like today when computers at home run so much background stuff that you have to find and turn off. Just give me the good old > prompt, and I'll be happy. Um, I guess, until I need the internet LOL!

Wow, just to think, I wrote a whole doctoral dissertation on what I thought was a lightning-fast machine that had a 12mhz processor and a 1200 baud modem using WordPerfect 4.0. Man, I'm dating myself, aren't I? I still can't stand MS-Word, which is such a burden to use and to format documents correctly without it automatically changing fonts on you every two lines. Oh well, "progress" so-to-speak. The progress makes things much slower, in my book.

Life is short: fix things.