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[Captain Audio]

I haven't visited much for several months, for several reasons.
Poor health was the main problem, and my older PC started breaking down.

Well the health problem turned out to be due to a large conglomeration of kidney stones.
The stones broke up suddenly and began to move, which took over a week (like having razor wire dragged through), then another week or so of passing blood before things returned to normal.
This was the right hand kidney, which feels fine now, I just wish the left side felt as good.

Once I began to feel better I treated myself to a new PC.
This machine is much more sophisticated than I'm used to, A new Hewlit Packard with large LCD monitor, dual core processor, 4GB memory, and 500 GB Hardrive. OS is Windows seven home premium.
A pretty decent machine, so far at least.

[josemas]

Glad you are on the mend and have the PC problem in order. 

I've been through the kidney stone thing myself in recent years and can sympathize with you on that particular.

Best

Joe

[paw broon]

OOOH, nasty. It's good your getting back to normal.  Linda suffered from that some years ago and it was no fun. Good luck.
By the way, we were in Edinburgh yesterday..................to buy a new computer.  The one on which I'm typing this is on it's last legs.  And the specs on the new one sound very similar to yours. 

[Captain Audio]

Only concern I have about the new PC is that the Windows 7 OS itself fills up about 1/5th of the hard drive, effectively leaving not much over 400 GB on the hard drive. Still a huge improvement over my old Vista PC.

Also to prepare a repair or rescue disc would require around a dozen 4GB DVD-R discs for the OS files alone.

Plenty of preinstalled goodies on this machine, haven't explored all of them yet.

Very quick and responsive. Also many older Microsoft OS are no longer supported and are becoming increasingly less compatible with some of the newer internet  sites and video sites.

One reason my Vista became nearly unusable was because of all the updates I've had to install over the years.
When I first installed Service Packs one and two everything worked fine, but after using its rescue disc to reinstall the OS after a major crash the machine would work fairly well until I finished installing all the recommended updates, then things went sour quickly.
I found that the Vista Service Pack one available from microsoft now days is not the same as it was when it first came out. The newer version does not contain all the features that the first version had.
I suspect the files may also be corrupted, either by age or by some deliberate hacking of Microsoft's update site.

When I get the opportunity I plan to have the Vista checked out for hardware problems. If repairable it will still be useful as a back up, and if it is trustworthy after repairs I may give it to my great grand niece for home work , reading PDF's, and playing video games and PD films.

PS
For a month or so before the kidney stone broke up and began to move I had taken to drinking several glasses of grape juice every day.
I've read that the ancient Greeks drank a shot of grape wine vinegar before bed time to prevent formation of large kidney stones. Perhaps something in the grape juice had a similar effect, causing the conglomerate to break up.

[Captain Audio]

Only concern I have about the new PC is that the Windows 7 OS itself fills up about 1/5th of the hard drive, effectively leaving not much over 400 GB on the hard drive. Still a huge improvement over my old Vista PC.

Also to prepare a repair or rescue disc would require around a dozen 4GB DVD-R discs for the OS files alone.
[edited to add]
Just found that it takes four 4GB discs to make a OS recovery for this machine, the other stuff hogging space on the Hard drive must be from all the factory installed add on programs.

Plenty of preinstalled goodies on this machine, haven't explored all of them yet.

Very quick and responsive. Also many older Microsoft OS are no longer supported and are becoming increasingly less compatible with some of the newer internet  sites and video sites.

One reason my Vista became nearly unusable was because of all the updates I've had to install over the years.
When I first installed Service Packs one and two everything worked fine, but after using its rescue disc to reinstall the OS after a major crash the machine would work fairly well until I finished installing all the recommended updates, then things went sour quickly.
I found that the Vista Service Pack one available from microsoft now days is not the same as it was when it first came out. The newer version does not contain all the features that the first version had.
I suspect the files may also be corrupted, either by age or by some deliberate hacking of Microsoft's update site.

When I get the opportunity I plan to have the Vista checked out for hardware problems. If repairable it will still be useful as a back up, and if it is trustworthy after repairs I may give it to my great grand niece for home work , reading PDF's, and playing video games and PD films.

PS
For a month or so before the kidney stone broke up and began to move I had taken to drinking several glasses of grape juice every day.
I've read that the ancient Greeks drank a shot of grape wine vinegar before bed time to prevent formation of large kidney stones. Perhaps something in the grape juice had a similar effect, causing the conglomerate to break up.

[paw broon]

Interesting as we never had Vista.  We jumped from XP direct to 7.  So, the new machine is up and running and seems fine so far (touch wood).  And I did notice the option of running XP inside 7.  But we need to learn 7 so we'll stick with it. As you say, lots of stuff on here to try out and play with.

[Captain Audio]

Interesting as we never had Vista.  We jumped from XP direct to 7.  So, the new machine is up and running and seems fine so far (touch wood).  And I did notice the option of running XP inside 7.  But we need to learn 7 so we'll stick with it. As you say, lots of stuff on here to try out and play with.

When I get around to checking on whether the old PC can be put back in shape by replacing some parts I may try rolling it back to Windows XP.
If so it will still be good for off line work and some online capability, through it probably won't handle some more recent video file types and streaming videos.

I suspect trying to upgrade to handle the streaming videos of several sites may have damaged the video card, which is one of the suggested possible causes of blue screen and black screen crashes.

If I can fix it I may pass that PC on to a niece, but don't want to saddle a kid with a balky and outdated PC.

[bowers]

I, too, had to recently semi-retire my old HP. Bought a new HP with 4gb memory and around 900gb left on the hard drive. Really a good deal. Got lucky and ran into a two hour doorbuster at Best Buy, otherwise I'd never have been able to afford one. Anyway, the old HP and Seagate external drive are now offline and in my basement man-cave, where they currently store about 500gb worth of files. I'm still getting used to Windows 7, but I'm starting to kind of like it. Not as user-friendly as XP, but much, much better than Vista. I'm surprised that some of my old favorite add-ons still work on 7 , such as C-Display, and Rar Frog. I was told they probably wouldn't - but they do. Haven't had any problems transferring files either, although with one of my computers offline I do have to use a flash drive. Ain't technology wonderful? Cheers, Bowers