15 February 2010

Yesterday was quite a day. My computer died. This is the third computer that has died in the past year. Either I'm spending way too much time on the computer or I've just had a run of bad computer karma. First my Dell laptop died after 2 1/2 years of good service while I was doing my MBA. Then my HP laptop died within a couple short months of ownership. I got the hard drive replaced and gave it to my nephew as a going off to college present. I then bought a Toshiba netbook which I loaded up with Norton 360 and McAfee anti-virus software because in each of the previous computer failures, my hard drive died and the thought was that perhaps it was due to a virus.

Being very careful not to open any videos or strange websites and with the addition of the security software, I thought I was safe. Apparently not. The Toshiba is still under warranty so they will replace the hard drive, but sending it off means that I would be without my computer for a few weeks, as well as losing everything on my old hard drive.

A couple positives came out of this adventure. My files had been backed up on Norton's storage area online. I spent last night working with their technical service department to get them restored to the computer I bought yesterday at Wal-Mart. Luckily, I'd previously added a monitor and keyboard to my netbook to accomodate my poor eyesite and big paws, so all I had to replace was an inexpensive tower. I'd also backed up all of my photos to Picasa, google's free photo storage area, as well as storing my documents on a thumb drive I keep in my desk. The other positive was that this event forced me to finally go to the public library where I was able to do a little research, and yes, confirmed the good advice of my blogging friends regarding the 'mystery question' from last week.

Last night when I went to bed exhausted, I was also grateful. I counted the days events with gratitude that everything worked out well in the end despite my initial frustrations. And while the assistance the tech support guy offered didn't succeed in downloading my files properly, this evening I figured out how to do it myself and my files are now safely back on my desktop.

I'm also thinking of switching to an Apple.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This is one of the big fears I carry as I go out into employment unprotected by the big company IT desk - managing the IT we all need now to function semi-effectively in the business world. Its complete Russian roulette. And sometimes, things "just go wrong" (thats a help desk diagnosis) with no rhyme nor reason. A laptop is more than 25% likley to suffer a major failure, which means that defacto, if you have it for 4 years it's going to die big time at least once. You did very well. Other bloggers take note...
Anonymous said…
Bad editing on my prev comment. 25% means on average its going to fail big time, not defacto. some one might be really lucky. I've had 3...none to do with a virus, so I'll stick to paranoia - tis safer. .
I am right there with you! I went through 3 laptops in a year...various malfunctions. Thank goodness it seems to be working now! I'm the backing -up queen since having all these problems.

Elizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder
slow panic said…
I'm a mac person -- 100 percent. my husband is constantly getting viruses on his PC -- I don't get any. of course they cost more and since my computers come and go through my job I haven't felt the financial pain of them. but I think it is worth every penny...
larramiefg said…
IF it's possible, buy the Apple. YOU will love it!

Popular Posts