It's Good to Be Back

It certainly is good to be back and writing a blog post. After more than eight years of remarkably reliable service, my HP Pavilion a1510n desktop PC running Windows XP finally went kaput on December 27, 2014. When I bought that machine back in September 2006, I never in my wildest dreams expected it to last as long as it did, much less to perform as well as it did for that length of time. The only major problem I encountered was in June of 2010 when the 200 gigabyte hard drive went bad. Instead of throwing the machine out and purchasing a new one as some folks recommended, I had the old hard drive replaced with a new 500 gigabyte version for one-third the cost of a new PC, and I was back up and running for another four and a half years. I have to hand it to HP for designing and building an excellent machine. No wonder they are second only to Apple in consumer ratings. Thankfully, I had  all of my important files stored on CDs and a flash drive right up to the day of my old computer's demise, so I didn't lose anything critical and was well prepared for the day of reckoning.

Several years ago, I began researching new computers and operating systems. I soon settled on Windows 7, which came out in 2010, as my preferred successor to XP based on favorable critical and consumer reviews. Two years after it came out, in 2012, Windows 7 became the official operating system of the U.S. government, which confirmed my decision. As time went on, however, I became concerned that my old PC might continue functioning until Windows 7 PCs were no longer available for purchase. Despite persistently unfavorable consumer ratings, computer manufacturers were increasingly pushing PCs with Windows 8 (which emerged in 2012) and gradually phasing out those with 7 from their catalogs and online stores. In April 2014, XP officially became obsolete, yet my PC stubbornly kept going like the Energizer Bunny, albeit with occasional minor snags.

For a while, I toyed with the idea of eventually getting a Dell Inspiron or some other Dell PC to replace my HP Pavilion. However, in mid-2014 I ultimately decided to stick with HP for three reasons: 1) the performance and longevity of my first HP computer, 2) HP's excellent customer satisfaction record compared with Dell and other manufacturers, and 3) HP's customer friendly approach, including great prices, frequent sales and free shipping, and its relative slowness in phasing out Windows 7 PCs compared with Dell and other manufacturers. As it happened, I was just in time to get on the Windows 7 bandwagon: late last month, HP was offering only two PCs in my price range with this operating system; all the others had the dreaded Windows 8. On top of that, HP was having its end of the year sale, so I got $70.00 off the already low-budget model I settled on: an HP 110-355t.

I lucked out, and I'm thankful for my new PC. It's remarkable how computer technology has continued to develop and come down in price as the years go by. My old PC came with a 200-gigabyte hard drive and 1 gigabyte of RAM, which was cutting-edge technology at the time. Now, for $200.00 less than I spent eight-plus years ago, I have a new PC with five times the hard drive space (yes, a mind-blowing one terabyte) and four times the memory (four GB) of my previous machine. So far I really like the design and functionality of my Windows 7 PC and am pretty satisfied with it. I don't expect it to last as long as the one I just lost, but I'm hoping to get three to four years of use out of it. Of course, if it ends up lasting longer than that, I will be delighted. In any case, I was long overdue to upgrade.

You don't realize just how much a computer, iPhone, or cell phone is part of your twenty-first century work and home lifestyle until you're suddenly bereft of one. You can't send or receive emails, read news, write and publish articles or music, blog, tweet, look at pictures, play games or anything else you usually do on those things. Your identity as a writer and composer and so much of your life is so tied up with that one plastic box of miniature electronic silicon circuitry that when you lose it, you feel as though you've lost a part of yourself. You actually feel like you're stranded on a desert island and have to make do with what you have and bide your time until someone comes to rescue you. Two days after my old computer died, I ordered my new PC on HP's website and had to wait ten additional days for its arrival at my house. It was excruciating. I have a part-time job as a handyman (weather permitting) so I wasn't completely without work, but it was a valuable exercise in patience all the same. I feel that I deserve some kind of award for going twelve days without a computer. I am now a certified survivor of extended PC deprivation. If someone else has gone without longer than this, I would love to read their story.

Well, it's good to be in business again, and I hope to get back into my blogging routine. My next post, which I was intending to write when my old PC crashed, will be about my choice for 2014 Person of the Year, so stay tuned!

Umm...Where Did June Go?

I had a busy month. Tending my garden, finishing up my second book, and some other projects consumed my time, leaving less important pursuits such as blogging aside. And then in the middle of the month, my computer crashed, and I learned a few things. I'd like to tell this story in detail, in case my experience can be helpful to others.

In 2006 I purchased an HP Pavilion a1510n desktop computer with a 200 gigabyte hard drive for my work, which was mostly writing and a little AutoCAD drafting. It turned out to be a very reliable machine that met my expectations, serving me well for four years. I expected it to last about that length of time before going "kaput" and forcing me to buy a new PC. Well, I'd noticed over the past several months or so that it was taking longer to boot up when I turned it on every day. I knew that this was happening because I was adding more and more programs and files to the hard drive, but somehow it never dawned on me to do anything about it. I figured that with the 200 gigabyte hard drive I still had plenty of storage space. So one day last month, I unplugged my computer to protect it from possible damage by a severe thunderstorm. When I plugged it back in, it wouldn't boot up properly, but kept trying to restart itself over and over. I took it to a repair shop, hoping the motherboard or some lesser component was the culprit and I'd be able to recover my files from the hard drive. It turned out that the computer's hard drive had gone bad and that none of my files were retrievable. I lost more than 700 pictures, but thankfully I had nearly all of my important files backed up on CDs. I asked the technician how much it would be to replace the old hard drive with a new one of 167 to 200 gigabyte capacity and he quoted me $300.00. He recommended buying a new computer. I called HP and asked how much they would charge to put in a new hard drive, and they quoted me $500.00. I priced comparable PCs and found the new HP Pavilion p6550z for only $450.00. Buying a new computer looked like the thing to do, especially considering that I paid $600.00 four years ago for a computer with only half the capabilities of the latest model. But before forking over the cash, I decided to call one other repair shop I knew of further away with an excellent reputation and ask the technician there his price for installing a new 200-gigabyte hard drive. He said he could put a new one in in three hours for $150.00, or for just ten more dollars he could put in a 500-gigabyte hard drive, with a three-year warranty either way. Sold! I took my PC to his shop and he installed a new hard drive with 500 gigabytes. I ended up having to wait five and a half hours, but figured it was worth it to get my PC working again. I didn't want anything fancy, just the basic capabilities I needed for my work. When I returned home and set up the computer, I was quite pleased with the result--I found it not only worked, it ran faster and better than it ever did before. Within a day or so I had all my programs reinstalled and was back in business. The thing runs like a champ now with the new 500 gigabyte hard drive. It feels like having a new computer, and all for the fraction of the cost of a new computer.

I learned one valuable lesson from the technician at the first repair shop. He hinted that putting lots of pictures on a hard drive is a recipe for a crash, even if the drive seems to have a lot of space. I did have an awful lot of pictures on there, so that must have been a precipitating factor in the crash. From now on I will store most of my pictures on CDs rather than on the computer's hard drive. Another lesson I learned is that getting your old computer fixed--especially if it's just one component that's bad--can be preferable to buying a new computer. I'm quite happy with my repaired PC and look forward to using it for many additional years.