My New Baby
My new computer came at about suppertime yesterday, and my son and I set right to work preparing it for use!
We were hard pressed to get enough onto it for me to be able to do my classes today. Also - I had to copy all of the programs from the storage partition of my old lap top onto the new one … started out doing it over wireless, and decided that I wouldn’t live long enough to see it end, so I switched over to a network cable. Then … there was the task of moving all of my emails, email accounts (8 POP accounts now - ugh!) … address book … etc. … without losing anything.
Thunderbird is a great email program … but it doesn’t import from TBird, or export. I managed to fool it into thinking it was still on my old lap top, and I didn’t lose a single email.
The keyboard has decent layout for a lap top, and I like the feel of the keys. That’s a plus. There are only a few changes, which I’m sure I’ll get used to soon enough. It’s got one of those wide screens … I think it’s 1280 X 800. Everything seems stretched! ;-)
Here are a few screen shots of my desktop, as it is now. I had to break it in half to get into here, and still have some detail to it. You can see that there’s a bit of overlap …
The background is a photo from the camp we stay at in August and September … a gorgeous sunset. I don’t know if I took that picture, or if my son, Daein, did. We’d just had a terrific storm. This was taken in Acton, ME.
By the way - clicking on the pictures brings you to the full sized versions.
There are still a few icons on my desktop. Those are shortcuts to proprietary programs which came with the computer. I haven’t had time to explore them and sort them out into their proper homes yet. Generally, the only things I have flat on my desktop are the programs or files I’m dealing with at the moment … I like to keep it free from clutter.
You can see that I’m fond of tool bars! I’ve got tool bars all around the edge of my desktop. Now that I have a stretched viewing field, I may make a few columns of tool bars on the right side … not sure if that will work for me or not.
I still haven’t finished installing much of the software I use on a regular basis … once I do, all of those “what the heck is this? icons in the tool bars will be replaced by their own cute little shortcuts.
And that’s it for now. I’m way behind on my emails!!! If I owe you an email … hang in there! It’ll come! *LOL* It may not be tonight, but it’ll come!
January 26th, 2006 at 12:47 am
Like your screen shot, and I am very happy for you. I know what it’s like to try a pamper a sick computer. May it serve you well. Now when you finish tweeking yours, you can build me a neat web page.
January 26th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
cool computer, i dig the tool bars, how do yo do that? great camp site, too
January 26th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
William! thankee! And you know … I’d be honored to build you a web page. You just holler!
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January 28th, 2006 at 2:11 am
Ah, the pleasures of a new computer. Believe it or not, I set up my first computer in 1977. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II. No hard drive, 10-1/2 inch floppy disk drive, and a wopping 64k of RAM. Those were the days!
I am an Apple guy now, but I date the phases of my life by each new computer I get (usually every 2 years is all I can bear).
January 28th, 2006 at 8:06 am
Oh my! We’re almost as bad on this end!
We got our first computer about 5 years later than you did - it was a Commodore 64. We moved from that cute little toy up to an Amiga, and got a variety of those over a number of years. We only gave up on Amigas about a decade ago, when it became apparent that no one realized their inherent greatness. ;-)
We do the same thing with computers … this is my second lap top in two years … the one before that was old when I got it, and only lasted a year. When I was still in my “desktop phase,” I either upgraded or changed every few years - out of self defense.
Thank you for visiting my blog - on my way over to take a look at yours.
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January 28th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
Commador 64 rocks ………awwwww those were the days. I had two disk drives hooked inline, an interface, my shortwave radio pug’d in, and copied UPI and other news services, did little to mpress my wife that I could have the news a day before it was reported….the noise of the printer working all hours of the night seemed to keep her from getting much needed sleep…….lol. Will not mention I was able to copy secert comm as they were being broadcast from various foriegn governments using RTTY, Morris Code, etc.
January 31st, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I remember storing programs on cassette tape with the TRS 80 & old apple IIs