The Cannibal in Me

Thanks to Sali, I now have a new computer to work on. One which is light coloured, which I favour over black; has a matte screen like the old one and works fine.

Actually took it for my sister, who can't do stuff when I'm on the one and only computer in the house. Since Sali offered to let go of her old underutilised laptop for a song, I grabbed the opportunity. But as I fiddled with the computer, I quickly found it to be more appealing than my new Acer which is fast and current, but not so great to WORK on. Older type screens are easier on my eyes - less glaring, no reflections. And I have a thing against black, which I feel is depressing and uninviting. The NEC looks a little like the computer I lost too.

It wasn't immediately good, though. As I suspected, the RAM size was very small. The computer is heavy, as was the norm 5 years ago. And our dear friend did not update the OS since forever. Even the clock was off since the machine hadn't been booted for far too long! I couldn't log on my wireless network, although thank God it does have an inbuilt wireless card. The hard drive is a tad too small, but that's not such a big deal since I can utilise my external drive and thumbdrive for storage.

Decided that the first order of the day (or night) was to upgrade the OS. Thank God (again) that it's original. Had to connect online manually using cable since I couldn't log on using the wireless. So many things have changed over the years that it's quite difficult to do anything on a computer running on XP SP 1. Left it to download as I slept and installed it first thing in the morning. Once done, I started upgrading the Firefox and imported my bookmarks. Thank God for XMarks! I'd hate having different sets on each computer!

Unfortunately, the wireless card couldn't handle logging on to a WPA encrypted network, so had to muddle around resetting to WEP instead. Had problems so sought help from the Belkin guys. They are SO helpful and I finally managed to get both computers on wireless. So glad for that.

To solve the RAM problem, cannibalised the extra RAM I had added to my dead HP. Miraculously, it fit. At first Abang thought the extra RAM wasn't compatible, but thanks to a bit of bullheadedness on my part, it proved to be a live one. So RAM is now 480Mb. Not up to current standards, but good enough to work on. No extra cost.

Updated the MS Office, and we're good to go. Now we'll just have to sort out who pays Sali since now I technically control both computers. Except that K Ayu will use my Acer more since I'd work on the old NEC. No one knows how much is the old computer is really worth, but know what, I don't really care. I love it already :)