Thoughts from the T-Shirt Lady

I have worked with computers for many years, at first taking courses at a community college, then going on to getting my degree in Computer Information Systems, and landing a job with the federal government as a computer programmer. In those days it was COBOL programming – I’m sure there are some of you out there who know what that is!

Over the course of the years, we have purchased PCs and upgraded PCs, and this week we are in the process of another upgrade.

Just recently, I upgrading our OS from Windows XP service pack 1 to service pack 2. Yes, I know, the service pack 2 update has been out for at least 2 years. I just heard too many horror stories of software and programs, etc, not working once the update was done.

Well, about 2 weeks ago, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to service pack 2. Before I did that, I went to all the on-line sites for software I currently use, to see if there were any issues about the upgrade. Didn’t see anything that I couldn’t handle.

And all went well!

I had spoken with my computer geek about adding more memory and also another hard drive. I didn’t know if I had 1 or 2 hard drives, and wasn’t about to open the case to check. (I’m a programmer, not a geek!) I wanted a separate hard drive to put the page pool on. I went ahead and added the large page pool file to the D drive, and made the C drive one much smaller. At least in the meantime, it would help somewhat. Also upgraded ie to 7.

My DH, who always complains about the computer being slow – standard issue and I’m used to hearing it – told me he thought it was running faster. That’s quite a complement.

So now, I’m ready to upgrade my PC – no way can I afford a new PC with us both being retired. Took it to my geek – he opened it, said I already had 2 hard drives – good that will save me money. Asked him about adding more memory – and that’s where we came across a stumbling block.

My PC was rebuilt about 5 years ago, so my memory chips are the older kind, and I might not be able to get any more. I could upgrade to the newer chips, but they wouldn’t fit on my motherboard. So I opted to go with an upgrade – new mother board, new power supply, and more memory. The upgrade includes 256 in memory. I have 512 now – prior to upgraded – we decided to add another 256. I run several programs at the same time when I am working on the pages for my website, and I want to make things run a little faster. I’m almost tempted to call them and tell them to add another 256.

Of course, whenever I get around to upgrading my PC, or upgrading video equipment – I’m always at least 2 years behind the latest inventions… took me forever to go to DVD from VHS, and CD from cassettes (I still have a turn table and vinyl records!) Guess I can wait around for another 5 years or so, before I get anything else done to my PC (grin).