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captainsblogAdding to the agitas of the past week was my total lack, until mere moments ago, of a fully functional computer for close to two weeks. Two Tuesdays ago, I baptized this keyboard and took out most of my number-key row and the two rather essential letters "R" and "Y"| (if your name's Ray, at least).
Following a bad experience with my longtime Rochester guru earlier in the year, I've been relying on the kindness and kompetence of an even longertime Buffalo friend- the legal secretary hired to work for me when we moved here in 1994, who lasted with that firm for almost 18 years longer than I did. Along that way, she picked up a ton of IT expertise, and after leaving them last year she started a new business geared to the administrative and technical needs of Dumb Attorneys Like Me- so I asked her to mind my R's and Y's on this occasion.
Which she did- a new keyboard came in over last weekend, and she put it in on the night before we all went to the vet. Unfortunately, in the process, some things got (and this is a technical term) "jiggled" on the underside of the hardware, and when I got this machine home, it had no wi-fi. As in the switch produced no switching. In a mild panic, I inquired, and was told, and I quote:
maybe pull out the memory chips to see if one of the connectors came lose.
Yes, she corrected the typo. And yes, jiggling the chips restored the wi-fi- but the speed of the rest of everything went down from 65 to 20 in a 55 zone. Errors abounded. Every app took longer to load and a bit longer, at least, to complete. Because of the grief of the ensuing days, I had to wait until today to give her a second shot at it....
which, largely, put us back where we were when I got it back. Apps and general speed: much improved. Wi-fi: dead.
Thus, it seemed, I could have two of three things needed for effective work and (yeah) cat-waxing: a fully functional keyboard, Wi-fi, and full access to memory. Not all three.
Ah, but wait....
Only the internal Wi-fi was gorked. We HAVE a USB adapter, used successfully with at least two other machines, that could fill the bill. I tried connecting it. Windows was not impressed. It wanted me to insert the installation disk from this POS peripheral I probably bought during George W. Bush days for a long-dead XP machine (and have been using most recently on an inherited-from-Cameron XP desktop in their old room).
I did not give up. I restored the adapter to said inheritance, long enough to find a Linksys driver site. I downloaded it to a flash drive, re-engaged it on here, and asked it to do its magic. It refused. Still didn't give up- and discovered that the downloaded file was in .zip format. Once extracted, and once I pointed this 'puter to the destination folder, the external wireless adapter cranked right up and you are reading the results.
So immense thanks to Lisa for her efforts, and no thanks to Bill Gates for making this 20 times harder than it should have been. I have my three out of three- at least for now- and that's a good thing:)
Following a bad experience with my longtime Rochester guru earlier in the year, I've been relying on the kindness and kompetence of an even longertime Buffalo friend- the legal secretary hired to work for me when we moved here in 1994, who lasted with that firm for almost 18 years longer than I did. Along that way, she picked up a ton of IT expertise, and after leaving them last year she started a new business geared to the administrative and technical needs of Dumb Attorneys Like Me- so I asked her to mind my R's and Y's on this occasion.
Which she did- a new keyboard came in over last weekend, and she put it in on the night before we all went to the vet. Unfortunately, in the process, some things got (and this is a technical term) "jiggled" on the underside of the hardware, and when I got this machine home, it had no wi-fi. As in the switch produced no switching. In a mild panic, I inquired, and was told, and I quote:
maybe pull out the memory chips to see if one of the connectors came lose.
Yes, she corrected the typo. And yes, jiggling the chips restored the wi-fi- but the speed of the rest of everything went down from 65 to 20 in a 55 zone. Errors abounded. Every app took longer to load and a bit longer, at least, to complete. Because of the grief of the ensuing days, I had to wait until today to give her a second shot at it....
which, largely, put us back where we were when I got it back. Apps and general speed: much improved. Wi-fi: dead.
Thus, it seemed, I could have two of three things needed for effective work and (yeah) cat-waxing: a fully functional keyboard, Wi-fi, and full access to memory. Not all three.
Ah, but wait....
Only the internal Wi-fi was gorked. We HAVE a USB adapter, used successfully with at least two other machines, that could fill the bill. I tried connecting it. Windows was not impressed. It wanted me to insert the installation disk from this POS peripheral I probably bought during George W. Bush days for a long-dead XP machine (and have been using most recently on an inherited-from-Cameron XP desktop in their old room).
I did not give up. I restored the adapter to said inheritance, long enough to find a Linksys driver site. I downloaded it to a flash drive, re-engaged it on here, and asked it to do its magic. It refused. Still didn't give up- and discovered that the downloaded file was in .zip format. Once extracted, and once I pointed this 'puter to the destination folder, the external wireless adapter cranked right up and you are reading the results.
So immense thanks to Lisa for her efforts, and no thanks to Bill Gates for making this 20 times harder than it should have been. I have my three out of three- at least for now- and that's a good thing:)
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Date: 2013-10-13 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-13 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-13 01:43 am (UTC)My Word 2003 has the same menus and the same toolbars as Word 2.0, judging from this series of all images. All the new features of each next version were added to this primary scheme.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2005/10/03/476412.aspx
I started with 6.0 on my computer, and managed to switch to each new version I had to work with without much trouble.
And then they decided that Word would be more functional if they reorganized everything, so Word 2007 looked like I'd never seen Word before, and 2010 is even more complicated (to somebody like me whose job requires simple formatting, its interface looks like a masterpiece of unnecessary complication). Imagine an emergency switch from 2003 to 2010...
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Date: 2013-10-13 10:12 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, the PC laptop I bought for work in February already needed doctoring. Pricing out the options (new battery, hard drive, and labor) cost more than replacing the damned thing. Unfortunately, the hospital I work for uses XP and all the new laptops come with Win8, so I had to buy another used machine. I have a feeling this one won't last long either. :(
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Date: 2013-10-13 10:43 pm (UTC)SorrI.