I think my laptop has about had it. It’s a Sony Vaio I’ve had since about 2000, and it’s been experiencing what the vet would call a “failure to thrive” for a while now. First the battery went. That’s not too big of a deal since I keep it forever tethered to my desk by its external monitor, keyboard and mouse, like a brain in a jar.
Then it was choked with files and the hard drive was heavily fragmented. Well, that happens when you try to keep years’ worth of e-mail and do lots of big, photo-heavy newsletters. I deleted all non-essential e-mail and archived all the previous years’ newsletters to CD. After defragging nightly for about a month, the hard drive is pretty much as unfragmented as you could ask for.
The last time I did a 20-page newsletter, my desktop publishing program started running so slowly that I began to long for the good old days of a 286 running PageMaker through Windows 3.1. (Now guess how old I am!) Last night I was working on a 4-page newsletter and had such a bad computer hang that I lost an hour of work, much of which should have been saved. Even though I finally recreated everything I’d done and finished the job, the whole process was like wading through molasses. By the end, my computer pretty much said, “You know the version you wanted to create to make into a PDF? Not gonna happen.”
The last time I had similar problems, I just ran the wonder twins: Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware. It turned out I had a resources-hogging worm that was throwing a wrench into things. This time, the answer doesn’t seem so simple.
My husband has offered to build me a desktop PC that’s faster, has more hard drive space, etc. It’s a very reasonable option since I don’t take the laptop anywhere anyway. (Although if the laptop is salvageable, it would be lovely to get a wireless network card for it so I can surf downstairs while I’m watching TV and not have to borrow hubby’s Mac.) Yes, he’s one of those Apple fanatics and has limited sympathy for the evils that befall PCs, despite being our household tech support guy.
So, that’s my latest tale of woe. I still hold out hope that I can at least get this latest newsletter to the printer today. Luckily, Average Jane can be written anywhere.
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