StoryBroads...It's All Good

I should know. I have three of them. That’s not counting the two ancient laptops I keep meaning to take to the recycle place, if I ever remember where I stashed them.

What I do not have is a fully functioning computer, which is something of a handicap when one is teaching an online class. Not to mention a backlog of emails, several hundred of them, to deal with. Well, Rex the Wonder Netbook does work, but only if I take it to the library or some other place with WiFi and without pastries. (Sorry, Panera. You're close and the scones are tempting, but I will not heed your Siren Song.)

My usual laptop, Irksome (aka Death Throes) was a decent machine for three years, but it had a Fatal Flaw: Windows Vista. So far as I can tell, the only reliable thing Vista does is produce about 25 pop-ups a day to inform me that Windows Has Blocked Some Startup Programs. Then it pummels the hapless machine with constant updates in a clearly futile effort to make Vista functional. Battered and confused, poor Irksome is giving up the ghost.

But not without taking some last shots at me. Most times it won’t let me past the Welcome page with the spinning Blue Wheel of Death, no matter how often I shut down, reboot, and retry. If I do manage to get on-line, it often takes three or four minutes to simply open an email. Freezes and lockups are common. I can do nothing but wait several minutes until the cursor comes back to life. And should I be working on something exceptionally important, a devilish message informs me that the mail program or my browser or something else utterly essential Needs to Close. And it does!

“But I needs to finish!” shrieks I. Nope. No allowance for that. So, like Death Throes, I sputtered toward an inevitable conclusion: Replace the doomed machine and hope it hangs on long enough for me to transfer my files to one that actually works.

Resigned, I did my homework, found a good deal, and on 1 January (for tax reasons) I ordered a new laptop. It arrived three weeks ago. New Guy (I’ll give it a proper name when its personality comes clear) is shiny, sleek, and incomprehensible.

Vista was abysmal, but with Windows 7, I am a stranger in a strange land. Also fearful. Any teenager could get me going in an afternoon, most likely. I shoulda had children! I should at least have friends with adolescents still living at home. But noooo.

So I ordered a book about Windows 7. It arrived last week and is 862 pages long. Am I intimidated? You betcha!

New Guy, flaunting its 17 bad-boy inches, is still perched on a bookshelf, practically a virgin. Why? Because I’m scared. I sit here surrounded by transfer cables and software discs and instruction manuals and a portable hard drive and flash drives (for multiple backups of everything!), thinking I should have settled for fewer screen inches so I could afford to hire a Geek.

Mostly, I’ve perfected the art of making excuses for putting off the inevitable. For example, tonight I have to post the last lesson for my class, so I’d better not tinker (perhaps to crash) until that’s safely formatted and dispatched. But time is clearly running out. This weekend, as Death Throes bravely lurches toward the great maw of recycled parts, I shall answer the call to adventure and hope the New Guy survives my ham-handed efforts to rouse him. If only I had some help . . .