(Putting on my best grandma-sounding voice)...Back when I was a little girl we didn't have things like personal computers. No sirree, any computer back in those days would fill an entire room and use something called binary code to talk to each other. Since it was all just gibberish, I mean numbers, it didn't mean much to the average person like me.
Fast forward to my senior year of high school back in (cough) 1990. I took a "computer appreciation" class where we learned, among other things, how to boot up a computer. They each needed their own boot disk and you couldn't use the same one for each computer. Same thing was still happening when I was in college.
circa 1990
Once I left college, I only used computers at work. I didn't own one at home. However, in the intervening years boot disks were now obsolete since computers were becoming more powerful. When hubby and I were married we had hoped to buy a personal computer. We were eyeing a 486 processor!
Fast forward once more. My hubby is now working at a large engineering company. When they replaced computers, they would raffle the old ones off to the employees. We finally had a home computer. It looked very similar to the one pictured above. We didn't get on the Internet, but used it to play games and do word processing. At the time I was working as a medical transcriptionist and I was able to work from home two mornings a week while my son was in preschool. I loved having a computer.
When son number two came along, I chose to stay home and we sold our home so I could do that. We now had some extra money on hand and purchased our very first brand new computer that would also allow for Internet access at home. I even remember the day simply because it was 9/10/01. I also found out I was a Type 1 diabetic that day.
That computer lasted us for quite some time. I even used it to do a couple different transcription jobs from home. It was quite a routine change from going to working full-time and using a day care (my oldest was in day care from the time he was 10 months old until he was 4-1/2 years old) to being a stay-at-home mom. I quickly discovered Yahoo Groups and made many long lasting friends there. Yes, people I eventually ended up meeting in-real-life and still stay in contact with even!
I continued using the Gateway we purchased in 2001 well into 2009 or 2010. It was beginning to show it's age and I started having a lot of issues with it. I ended up using my hubby's laptop for my main computer for a short time, but it was almost as old as the Gateway. Soon though, a friend of mine was upgrading some computers at their home and gifted me with one.
I'm not sure of the actual time frame, but I think it was 3-4 years ago that it occurred. That Dell has been doing well, but lately, it's had some issues. Even with keeping most of my photos (I only keep six months on my computer) on an external hard drive and running scans constantly, it runs slower than molasses more often than not. I've been getting the "blue screen of death" more often as well and it just seems to be on its last legs.
I was able to purchase an equally ancient (so my brother told me) laptop for a song about a year ago and I would use that from time to time. It would run faster simply because I didn't have a lot of stuff on it.
For the last four years, I've jokingly asked my hubby for a new laptop for Christmas or my birthday (which arrives three weeks before Christmas). This year though, that's exactly what I got!
I'm now the proud owner of a new HP Pavilion. I'm trying to figure out how to use Windows 8...any tips? I have been using Windows XP for the last 10 year I think. I'm spent a bit of time yesterday morning reading and watching tutorials. I need to move files from my old computer to this one. And I couldn't be happier. I love how quickly it boots up and how the keys feel under my fingers. It is not a touch screen as I had asked for one with a larger screen and it was either that or the touch screen. Since I watch a lot of videos and do a lot of photo work on the computer, my hubby rightly thought I'd prefer the larger screen.
We are now trying to figure out what to do with my old computer and laptop. I know the desktop will become the "school" computer, but it needs to find a new home somewhere on the main floor so that I can have my computer desk back for my new laptop. I may try to add a small table in our den and move it there. I think the younger boys will appreciate this. It will allow them more access to play as well because this new laptop is all mine! I'm not going to be a good sharer with it at all.
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