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Computer woes & joys

bcgal00

bcgal00

Say, "birdseed!"
Pollywog
Joined
Nov 18, 2010
Messages
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Can I share my joy with you all? I'm getting a new computer built for me. Yay! (that's the joy part) I've been struggling with computer issues for months now (that's the woe part). Lots of little problems, memory problems, glitchy weird stuff happening and had 2 EHD failures that I am just sick about. One was retrievable and was transferred to a new drive and the other I don't know about yet....ugh.

So I was talking with our computer guy who is so good about explaining everything and making suggestions. He runs a computer biz out of his home and has been in business for 40 yrs (he is a genius). So we talked about what I want/need and he promises to build me one with superior parts, with what I need, so I said to go ahead....my heart was thumping....both with the excitement of a super duper fast computer and the cost (I've not been wanting to spend money around Xmas time especially since I'm off work in January) but having had all these issues lately I am just tired of it all. Plus, I do need to get a new plan in place for photo organization and storage. He's going to put in four drives and everything will be organized, photos in their own drive, photoshop and editing stuff in their own drive and other techie stuff I don't understand but apparently it all will make my computer run at peak performance. I trust him and feel good about however he builds it. I think he says it will have 16 gigs ram. My mind kind of went blank after awhile b/c I don't understand all the jargon but the gist of it is that I will have a new computer probably by Xmas and I can start off fresh with everything organized (which is always my downfall).

The second best part is that he will use parts in his shop to fix my existing computer and get it in good working order for just a few bucks and will give me a used monitor, keyboard and mouse, and I can give this to Bailey (my teenaged GD) for her to learn how to digi scrap on. Hopefully this will all be done by Xmas. She's going to be so excited. I have really wanted to get her set up for scrapping but her laptop just isn't good enough, its so outdated. I'll be able to give her my cs6 as I don't need it and then she can start scrapping.

So, I called my hubs, told him the plan, said I don't want anything for Xmas, this is all I need. He said ok, go for it.

So what about you???? Any computer woes, computer joys????

Also, at some point I would love a dual monitor but maybe I better wait a bit LOL.
 
My computer crashed a few months ago which was an incredibly painful experience. My extra EHD was full so I had stopped backing up regularly (and I had wiped everything off of it to try to fit a back-up onto it and then couldn't!). Thank goodness for Backblaze which saved all my stuff. The only thing it didn't have was the most recent version of my ACDSee database, which was entirely my fault for not having backed it up to a a file in a location that Backblaze would copy. I always was a believer in online backup, but now I'm a zealot. :D I did still have to reinstall all my programs which was a pain. On the upside, I did get a huge new internal HD and while I had the guts of my computer exposed, I installed an updated wifi card and my wifi is SO much faster than it had been.

So, yes, both woe and joy from computers!
 
I remember when I got my desktop a couple of years ago. It's still going strong and it's very fast, and it makes me very glad I decided to go as high as I could go when I was purchasing.

That's so cool that your GD will be scrapping. I remember teaching Olivia (and then Olivia teaching me LOL) and how we used to scrap together. I really miss those days. She doesn't scrap any while she's at university ~ she's too busy creating other things ~ but I hope one day she'll come back to it.
 
@AnneofAlamo OMG...Anne....does anyone ever use 3 screens...that would be crazy LOL. I might look into it in the new year but for now I'd better not ask for anything else b/c I already feel guilty spending this money, especially over the holiday season. I'll be super happy with this (for now).
 
Can't wait to hear all about your new PC and how all of that works for you! I'm afraid I'm on the verge of needing one - just hate to dish out the moola for one!!
 
Awesome!! Hope you totally enjoy it! I've been shopping around. My laptop is getting older and not performing like it should. But I just bought a car, so I'm going to hold off on the computer for a bit until I see how my budget is going to work now. But I do love my dual monitors, it drives me crazy at work when I have to work with just one.
 
Yea for a new computer, but boo to the problems with your current one! And it is so cool that you're going to set up your GD with a scrapping-capable computer! I love it!
I got a new laptop about 8 months ago and I hope I don't have to replace it anytime soon lol. :) Eventually we'll need a desktop so DD can do homework. So, I guess you could say I want a "family desktop," cuz I want it out in the open in our family room. I'm a big believer in holding DD's hand as she learns to cross the "information superhighway."
 
I'm excited for you! It sounds like you will be in heaven! I say don't wait like Anne!

I will be in despair when my computer.... moves on. It's a 17" Mac Book Pro, and they don't make them anymore. I don't know what to do. I don't want to go smaller, and I don't really want to go back to Windows. I need a portable last top too! Ugh. Ugh.

Thankfully, we have an almost five year old, (but almost pristine) desktop Mac that the boys use for homework and such! I started on there, but then portability became an issue.
 
Two days after we arrived home from vacation, my desktop died! It was six years old, the hard drive was almost full and it had been acting up for weeks before we left. I went out and bought a new desktop almost right away - Best Buy had a great sale going, so it has a 2TB hard drive, partitioned, with 16 gigs of ram (4 drives sounds like a dream Rae). Thankfully, I have Carbonite and had almost everything I needed backed up there. I also had most of my photos backed up on my laptop and a lot of the digi supplies. At first I had a problem with my ACDSee catalogue as I had too many backups on there and didn't know which one to use as there were no dates attached. After a couple of hours testing them out, everything was back in order and now I just need to play catch up! I also feel really good about having a clean install and am not re-installing everything.
 
janedee said:
Two days after we arrived home from vacation, my desktop died! It was six years old, the hard drive was almost full and it had been acting up for weeks before we left. I went out and bought a new desktop almost right away - Best Buy had a great sale going, so it has a 2TB hard drive, partitioned, with 16 gigs of ram (4 drives sounds like a dream Rae). Thankfully, I have Carbonite and had almost everything I needed backed up there. I also had most of my photos backed up on my laptop and a lot of the digi supplies. At first I had a problem with my ACDSee catalogue as I had too many backups on there and didn't know which one to use as there were no dates attached. After a couple of hours testing them out, everything was back in order and now I just need to play catch up! I also feel really good about having a clean install and am not re-installing everything.
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@janedee I will be setting up ACDSee on the new computer so I'll have to learn how to use it and learn how to do a backup of my tagging. Pls tell me it will be easy LOL. I'm going to have to search youtube for videos on it (I always find a video easier than reading). I scrap with bridge so ACDSee is going to be a learning curve for me. I had an old version years ago but never really used it and whatever I learned back then I have forgotten. But hopefully it will be worth it to get set up with it.
 
The best thing to do before you start tagging is to think about how you look for your scrapbook supplies, do you want to know where your blue floral papers are or does color not matter. Do you want to look for butterflies or insects? How detailed do you want it to be? I took a class back when I first got ACDSee so there are probably some of those out there too, as well as the utube videos. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try and help, although I'm definitely not an expert!
 
Yeah! My brother built our latest desktop. I love it. I just need to set it up again, and use it! I keep defaulting to my laptop instead.

Just think - a new computer in time for MOC scrapping!
 
oh how fun that you're getting a new computer made just for you! My hubby built mine and after 4 years it's still lightning fast. I will agree with Anne though... dual monitors is seriously the only way to scrap! I started using two monitors at work because I do mechanical drawings and use one screen to view the markup with changes on it and then the other for the new drawing. As soon as I started doing it at work I knew it would be awesome for scrapping. I can't imagine scrapping without now. :)
 
janedee said:
The best thing to do before you start tagging is to think about how you look for your scrapbook supplies, do you want to know where your blue floral papers are or does color not matter. Do you want to look for butterflies or insects? How detailed do you want it to be? I took a class back when I first got ACDSee so there are probably some of those out there too, as well as the utube videos. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try and help, although I'm definitely not an expert!
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@janedee I'm sure I'll have questions when I get set up. I'll look for some vids first. TY.
 
Hubby just finished building our new computer... he originally was just reformatting the hard drive, but he asked it to run so many times... it took days! then, as it was finished, my son (3 yrs old) grabbed something he wasn't supposed to, and we think it shorted/disrupted the video card signal... so we couldn't see anything on the monitors. hubby bought a new video card, and some other parts, and finally got it back together last weekend. 2 weeks without scrapping was horrible! my settings are still not quite right, and my stash hasn't been uploaded to Organizer (again) yet... but slowly, we'll get there.
 
Touch wood my nearly 2 yr old laptop is behaving!
Windows updates drive me crazy but i think the last one fixed the wifi identification problem it was having -for months! So I've been browsing challenges & DLing on older laptop & moving everything via EHD to scrap on newer laptop & then moving completed pages back to older one to UL has been a real pain- 2 laptops on 1 desk is also not my fave, i like space too much to ever have 2 monitors like my DH uses with his laptop dock
 
@klee73010 I know what you mean. I would just die if I had to go two weeks without scrapping LOL. It's nice to take a break here and there for a day or two but then I just NEED to scrap. Hope you have it all organized again soon. That's the part I really dread...the reloading of software, pictures, etc...ugh.
 
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