OK, so I lost my job a couple of weeks ago. Last Sunday, I was looking through the want ads in the paper, and couldn’t find anything I was qualified for, unless I want to take a $6.00 an hour job, and, hey, I have rent and bills to pay, six an hour won’t cover my expenses- at least not if I want to buy groceries, too. Anyhoo, Monday, I was trying to do an online job search, with similar results- all the jobs required experience and knowledge of software that I don’t have (my computer will soon be celebrating its sixth birthday, if I let it live.) Of course, all the programs kept freezing up on me, and I kept having to reboot. Mind you, I was extremely depressed to begin with- had just finished up with one crying jag and was getting ready to go into another- and the damned machine froze up one too many times. I threw my wireless keyboard on the floor and stomped on it. So, I had to go out and buy a new keyboard.
Well, then I started finding that I couldn’t log onto the SDMB, among other favorite sites. And programs continued to freeze up on me. So, in a fit of pique, I reformatted my hard drive. I didn’t just restore it to its original settings, I wiped the hard drive clean and started over. Woo-hoo, that was a fun-filled afternoon.
The computer seems to be behaving itself now, so I guess it learned its lesson.
Computers and their peripherals will obey me, or be destroyed.
you go girl. you have to teach computers who is boss. they can smell fear.
And for the record, if a job requires software knowledge that you don’t have, then see if you can download a demo. if so, then you can blag the whole experience thing.
You need to get a new computer. Yes, I know this is a very bad time to remind you of this! Sorry! But 6 years is too old. The good news is, you can get a 2-3 year old used computer for peanuts, and that would be a definite improvement over what you’ve got now. Hell, you can get a low-end (cheep) PC for $250-$300!
I always found that computers respond reasonably well to threats: “Shape up, or I’m gonna rip your chips out!”
The really weird thing I discovered, when I was a sys admin type, was that machines know when you’re getting ready to replace them, and choose the most inopportune moment to crap out. The new server has just been delivered, and you’re planning to retire the old one over the weekend. Sometime between Thursday morning and the close of business Friday, the old server will suffer coronary thrombosis. Vengeful SOBs.
Six years isn’t all that old, but you have to do some housekeeping occasionally, and it would not hurt to upgrade RAM, HD, and CPU. Mine is a '98 model (WallStreet PowerBook) and I expect to get at least one more year out of it as my primary computer. (And I’m a database solutions designer, so I earn my living with it).
What’s your OS? If you’re using a Microsoft OS, I think you’re supposed to archive your documents and write down your settings and then nuke and reinstall the OS and all your apps every once in a while (more often than every six years at any rate). If you’re on a Mac, you should at least defragment and optimize, rebuild your desktop, reset your PRAM, and write down / delete / re-enter your most volatile prefs.
Of the recommended upgrades, RAM is the cheapest and also the commodity that “code inflation” of the last six years has affected the most. A computer sold six years ago may only have 64 MB of RAM, and you can afford to up it to 512 a lot more easily than you can afford a whole new computer.
Did I say six? More like five, but it’s still pretty outdated. I’ve actually been thinking about getting a new hard drive (I think my current hard drive has a physical flaw in it- I have a Gateway Destination, and I guess this was a fairly common problem with that product line, which generally didn’t have all the bugs worked out anyway, but I didn’t find this out until I had set the behemoth up- Gateway no longer makes the Destination, and peripherals for it are hard to find)
I have Window 98, and if I do get a new hard drive, I think I’ll get Windows ME installed- my mom has it on her laptop, and it seems to run pretty smoothly.
If and when I do get a new computer, I’m going to get a Macintosh. They’re more user-friendly and have better toys.
But 6 years is too old. The good news is, you can get a 2-3 year old used computer for peanuts, and that would be a definite improvement over what you’ve got now. Hell, you can get a low-end (cheep) PC for $250-$300!