Computer nightmare! Yesterday the hard disk on my computer went TU. It made all sorts of noise and the machine would simply not go. Now, don't fret, because I regularly back up my data, so nothing was lost. The first thing I did however was to take my external hard drive with the back up and make a back up of it on another computer in the house.

So, anyway, I could go get a new hard drive for $70 and spend days reloading software or I could get a new computer and spend days loading software. Hard decision -NOT. I went to Fry's and got a new computer and I am glad I did. It is a 2.6 gig HP with 3 gig of RAM and a 500G drive. My old one was pretty puny by comparison. BUT, the real step forward was a new flat panel LCD. I got a 22 inch LG screen. I tell you it is like going to the movies it is so big. You can get a lot of stuff on it which makes it easier to swap between windows. With 1680x1050 native resolution it is a sight to behold.

So anyway, I tried to reload my accounting software - Quickbooks. Well, sh*t, it isn't compatible with VISTA. I couldn't get a computer with XP, it had to be VISTA. So I had to buy a new version. My humble opinion is that VISTA sucks. It is just another layer of pretty crap that gets between the user and the guts of what is going on. It is unnecessarily complicated and unnecessarily big. It is designed for installations with a large number of users with system administrators. I can't even figure out how to administer my own damn computer.

Remember DOS 2.0? Remember the c:> prompt? Remember screwing around trying to get the dip switch settings right on your new blazing fast 1200 baud modem? Remember one sided disks? Remember machine language? Remember your first Epson dot matrix printer where you could really print images (sort of)? Remember fan fold paper? Remember bringing home used fan fold paper from the computer center at work and printing on the other side? Remember the 640k Ram upgrade (with its 48 chips)? Remember buying your first 10-pack of Verbatim double sided 360k disks for $77.00? Remember Jump Joe? Well, those were the good old days of hobby computing.

I actually don't miss them too much. They were fun but not very productive. On the whole modern computer systems are great. but quirky. When they work properly, they are amazing. It just seems that they are so complicated that you are in a continual tweaking mode. Now where is that dang contacts list?