Thanks to the fun I had in Superior chasing remnants of Pinal City, I started looking for other ghost towns in the area. My plan for Saturday was to see if I could drive to the remains of Reymert, located southwest of Superior. So much for plans...
My laptop served us faithfully for almost 4 years as the decorative coating wore away, but Friday evening it died a sudden, and apparently painless, death. At least there was no screeching noises from the hard drive.
First thing Saturday morning I headed out to check some local stores. In spite of what their website said, the first store didn't open until 10 a.m. so I wasted time by wandering through the Mesa Swap Meet for the first (and last...) time.
The first two big name stores didn't have anything appropriate in stock so I followed
Life's Little Adventures lead and headed to Costco. A few minutes later, I walked out with a new laptop in hand. I toyed with jumping to an Apple, but one of my new "essential" programs is only available on Windows and I didn't want to add the emulator layer to a program's learning curve.
I knew configuring the new machine was going to be time consuming, but I took comfort in knowing that I had a backup that was just a few hours old - or so I thought! Turns out, the backup hasn't worked properly since MS did the Windows 10 update a few months ago. Uhh Oh!
A drive into town to the superstore that has all the junk you may never need
resulted in the appropriate adapter in hand. Since it was the motherboard that died in the old machine, I had every hope that I could recover my files from the old hard drive. It took longer to walk through the store and back out again than it did to find the adapter cable I needed.
Spent the rest of Saturday down loading and installing key apps (including a freeware replacement for MS Office) and recovering all the files from the old hard drive. Now it's just a matter of waiting hours (and hours) for the initial backup to finish!
Glad it happened now instead of in a couple weeks when we're on the road.
Ouch! Well, it sounds like you recovered nicely. But what was with that old coating? Must be all that varnish remover on your hands. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'm still recovering. The new computer is operational, but it's still very slowly building a back-up.
DeleteThe good thing about buying at Costco is the longer return policy, just in case. Seems like we've know too many people, ourselves included, who have had relatively new computers up and die.
ReplyDeleteHope you get everything recovered.
I think we've done alright on the recovery. I'm still wondering if I should have made the leap, but I'm a cheapskate and hate to spend the $$ to buy fruit.
DeleteI got a new laptop last fall and I am still learning how to do things the windows 10 way. The problem is the user, not the programs.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
I'd upgraded both of our machines to Win10 several months ago so I'd already made that transition. Now it's just sorting out the new machine.
DeleteI feel your pain. Our laptop has served us faithfully for nearly 4 years now, but with the advent of Windows 10 has shown signs of WTF. Perhaps this summer at home we'll be all the smarter with an upgrade.....
ReplyDeleteI was pleased to get as much time out of my machine as I did. I'd been toying (and avoiding) with thoughts of upgrades so I wasn't totally shocked when the time came. I must admit, I'm still half thinking that I should have made the jump to Apple. This machine, with faster processor and more memory, is slower than the old one...
DeleteWhat kind of data plan do you have on the road that handled all of those updates and file transfers? I went to Apple in 2010 and never looked back, best decision i had made after 15 years in computers ... yet there was a learning curve and yes there are some programs that need windows.
ReplyDeleteJust an FYI ... you can partition an Apple hard drive and run Windows on the other partition.
We're using two data plans for our internet access both on the road and at home. We live on 25 Gig - 20 Gig on a Verizon MiFi and 5 Gig on an AT&T MiFi. We've done that for over 3 years without going over but we don't download video or use cloud based apps or backups.
DeleteThanks for the info John. I have Verizon for my cell phone service and at home I have to use satellite internet due to my location. I buy 15Gb per month and found out very soon what I could no longer do, that soaked up data. Luckily I get a "free" data period with unlimited between midnight and 5am. I use an Activity Monitor on my 2nd monitor at all times to catch anything unexpected using data in the background.
DeleteI forgot in the past to let you know I am familiar with your home town in WA ... I lived in the Oak Harbor/Coupeville area for ten years before retiring.
DeleteLove Whidbey Island, especially the middle part! I can't believe how much Oak Harbor has changed, but I guess that's true of most anywhere!
DeleteI spent most of my time there just about a mile from Ft Eby, NW of Coupeville. I left in 1994, time flies, and they had just passed the first laws to log the island. The NAS was rumored to be closing due to BRAC and people were buying property, clearing trees and building houses by the day ... made me sick.
DeleteI later returned for a visit in 2004 and was shocked at the changes in Oak Harbor. I still have friends that live in OH and surrounding towns so they keep me updated along with reading the Whidbey Times.
Yes ... just like anywhere else, once it's known what a great place it is ... changes will happen.