Modern technology SUUUUCCCKKSS!!!!!

Okay, so these computers have dramatically changed our lives. I get that. And they SUCK!

So, I'm at the computer a couple mornings ago, drinking my wake up coffee, reading the forums, Wall Street Journal, and so forth, when I notice the computer tower start making a "click, click, whirrrr" noise. Not the usual spool up high speed whir, a puny little whir, then click, click, repeat. Oh crap!!!! I'll bet that's the hard drive about to take a dump! Sure enough, a couple hours later the alert screen pops up......"imminent failure of the hard drive..blah blah blah. Then...............dead! I've been using Carbonite for backup the last few years, so not too worried about losing data (especially incriminating pictures of some of you guys), but still.......restoring ain't gonna be a picnic.

so yesterday morning I go to the store, buy a new whiz bang, ultra fast, terrabite storage hard drive, yada yada powerhouse. Go through all the setup procedure, had to make a call to tech support because the lame azz machine didn't know how to automatically connect with the ISP, then add latest version of MS Office, start the recovery from Carbonite, and then a blue screen problem screen (the second most annoying screen you can get, the first will happen shortly). Had to do a reboot, fortunately the Carbonite restore program is pretty smart and picked up where it was cut off. Then, about half an hour later the screen goes black (yeah, THIS is the most annoying screen). Reboot again, 7 minutes and black again!! Get tech support back on the phone again, wherewith we spend the next 1.5 hrs with him making me jump through hoops trying to figure out a way to blame it on my monitor, the cable, my ISP, .......well......anything except the only component in the equation that was not there the day before when every thing was working. Finally we had a.........oh, let's call it a frank discussion....and in a few minutes he returns from a discussion with his supervisor and announces that it's probably a faulty mother board. Ya think!?!? Hey, that only wasted about 8 hours of my life!

I was able to have some limited access through my bride's Ipad, but those are a PITA to type on.

So today, it's back to the store for a refund, and a quick look at their inventory to see they had no other desirable alternatives and then on to another store. Anyway, here on the newest box, which automatically picked up the ISP btw, new programs loaded and Carbonite restore working in the background (it's estimating about 24 hrs to complete itself.....lots of pictures ya know :3dSMILE:) and we might be returning to "normalcy".

While I enjoy the benefits that a personal computer has brought into our lives I still feel like screaming............................TECHNOLOGY SUCKS!!!!!!!

Uncle Bob..we have a computer here which is spending more and more time leaning on its walking stick and asking itself dumb questions..Senility must be setting in...:D I think its gunna take a dump soon,too.Lynda backs up everything on to an external hard drive,so it wont be too painful..And,yeah,dont want to lose too many of those babes,do ya..:D

And Uncle Bashful Bob, sadly it doesn't suck the right thing or swallow but please forgive me as I am not always this rude but after your rant I had all these funny pictures of you sitting at your desk with the computer in your lap.:LOL::LOL::LOL: Oh how I wish I had some pictures to post.:LOL::LOL:

Anyway, should be all better by tommorrow, huh??? BTW, what the heck is an I-pad??? Sounds like a strange why to say "my house"......

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Originally Posted by Dave Severson

BTW, what the heck is an I-pad??? ...

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Don't worry about it Dave, they're something new...................you should get them in S.D. in about...........oh, 10 years or so...............:eek::LOL:

I think your computer went into " sensory overload" from all of those pictures you have stored in there...........you know, the ones of those little cuties you seem to come up with at the drop of a hat.:eek: I mean, come on Bob, these things were NEVER designed to take that kind of abuse! :LOL::LOL: It's kinda like when they were killing HAL in 2001.

Daisy, Daisy,...........................:D

Don

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Originally Posted by Whiplash23T

And Uncle Bashful Bob, sadly it doesn't suck the right thing or swallow but please forgive me as I am not always this rude but after your rant I had all these funny pictures of you sitting at your desk with the computer in your lap.:LOL::LOL::LOL: Oh how I wish I had some pictures to post.:LOL::LOL:

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That would have to be a lap top ?:3dSMILE:

Well I hope you get it all worked out Bob.
I had to reboot my putor about a month ago
and it is no fun. It crashed to and ended up
costig about $100 bucks. Not to bad, but the
time that was envolved was.
Kurt

I understand where you are coming from because our main computer did the exact same thing today.

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Originally Posted by manky

That would have to be a lap top ?:3dSMILE:

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Nah,manky,,where it all ended up after uncle Bob smacked it one..in his lap..:LOL:

ahhhhhh 'puters. Uncle Bob, you are sounding like some of the things that I have had happen in the last three years. Not sure why, but 3 mid line mobos, 2 graphic cards, a set of RAM strips and a monitor. My guess - power surges/higher then necessary VAC that the surge protector missed. So far, no hard drives, but I have two external - a 320 and an 80 for back up as well as the 720 in the case - and all pretty good "name" brands. Then there are the grand children that showed up over Christmas and sent some emails to somewhere as well as viewed some nasty cookies sites that dragged in a bunch of spam as well as a virus. Then they changed some settings. I think it's all clean and repaired now, but each day up to this morning had brought a new surprise or several. Lots of clean up, defrags, registry repairs - way too much time. The next time they come for a visit, they had best bring their laptops and go wireless through my system.

Here in South Dakota, we are just getting in the new I-rons.

They should call computers the three year itch! That seems to be the amount of time it takes one to thoroughly frustrate someone. Since we own Dell's add the 5 phone numbers you call waiting on hold to get told that you need to call this number, only to play the game again, until finally somebody in India comes on and you miss every third word they say, until they say they'll send you a box to mail it back to them! Yeah I've been there done that at least three times in the last 9 years. Vista was good for major failures especially related to windows explorer. We finally went to firefox for a browser while Vista'ing, only to get Windows 7 the first day out(much better system, more stable than Vista). Our lap top still runs XP which in my opinion is better than 7 and Vista. I'm surprised nobody has gone Postal on Gates for some of the frustrations he causes!

Oh yeah - my new monitor - a 22 inch flat screen TV. I can watch the boob tube or switch it to being a monitor. Nice part, it was cheaper then a monitor by a fair amount and a lot better picture. I even tried the PC on the 42", but that was a bit too much

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Originally Posted by IC2

ahhhhhh 'puters. Uncle Bob, you are sounding like some of the things that I have had happen in the last three years. Not sure why, but 3 mid line mobos, 2 graphic cards, a set of RAM strips and a monitor. My guess - power surges/higher then necessary VAC that the surge protector missed. So far, no hard drives, but I have two external - a 320 and an 80 for back up as well as the 720 in the case - and all pretty good "name" brands. Then there are the grand children that showed up over Christmas and sent some emails to somewhere as well as viewed some nasty cookies sites that dragged in a bunch of spam as well as a virus. Then they changed some settings. I think it's all clean and repaired now, but each day up to this morning had brought a new surprise or several. Lots of clean up, defrags, registry repairs - way too much time. The next time they come for a visit, they had best bring their laptops and go wireless through my system.

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Dave, your lines about grandkids made me cringe. A grandson was here over his "winter break" and grandma told him he could play some games on the 'puter. I assumed that meant those resident on the hard drive, but the next I knew he was saying he could not get one to work right, and it had some new screen - it was the security warning that the program being executed was contaminated :CRY: Luckily he had stopped at the warning, but when I looked he had about forty windows open with stupid on-line games. We shut down, initiated full system scans and talked about why we could not just open files indiscriminantly.... In one ear and out the other, I'm sure.:rolleyes:

computers I love. Engines I love.
yet why is it I despise computerized engines?

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Originally Posted by rspears

Dave, your lines about grandkids made me cringe. A grandson was here over his "winter break" and grandma told him he could play some games on the 'puter. I assumed that meant those resident on the hard drive, but the next I knew he was saying he could not get one to work right, and it had some new screen - it was the security warning that the program being executed was contaminated :CRY: Luckily he had stopped at the warning, but when I looked he had about forty windows open with stupid on-line games. We shut down, initiated full system scans and talked about why we could not just open files indiscriminantly.... In one ear and out the other, I'm sure.:rolleyes:

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The nice part with GC - mom and dad finally get to take them home. I love them - but .......:CRY::CRY:

And the spam - two just popped in from their little gifts to me, but those aren't too bad as long as I don't open them and do another contamination

Dave i will raise you 10", got a 32" wide screen here :LOL::LOL::LOL:

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Originally Posted by IC2

Oh yeah - my new monitor - a 22 inch flat screen TV. I can watch the boob tube or switch it to being a monitor. Nice part, it was cheaper then a monitor by a fair amount and a lot better picture. I even tried the PC on the 42", but that was a bit too much

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Originally Posted by roadster32

Dave i will raise you 10", got a 32" wide screen here :LOL::LOL::LOL:

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Steve - Is that so you can sit in your favorite recliner and 'surf'??? Great idea!!

I'm banned to the office Dave :LOL:


http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...tors_large.jpg

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Originally Posted by IC2

Steve - Is that so you can sit in your favorite recliner and 'surf'??? Great idea!!

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deeproots you and i are the same. I love building computers and cars. as long as my car does not have a computer.

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Originally Posted by jyardgirl

deeproots you and i are the same. I love building computers and cars. as long as my car does not have a computer.

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I learnt about computers years ago and build my own, Its an awful lot cheaper :D
Once you understand them they are pretty straight forward.

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Originally Posted by roadster32

Once you understand them they are pretty straight forward.

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Yeah, I've heard that said about women too...............................still don't believe it.........:HMMM:

Miracles are pretty easy Bob, however impossible is beyond me :LOL:

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Originally Posted by Bob Parmenter

Yeah, I've heard that said about women too...............................still don't believe it.........:HMMM:

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it is alot cheaper roadster. and i can build it for exactly what i want it to do. not a big gamer but i do alot with video and using my tv as a secondary monitor.

Building a computer is too simple and cheap vs buying a POS loaded with low end parts and bloatware from Dell or others. You need only a few parts, screw the mobo in the case then locate and plug everything else in the case that you want. I just did a rebuild with everything new but the case and the 3.5" floppy and it was less then $300 and it is one step below a gamers 'puter. Yeah, you do need to make sure everything is compatible, but that only takes a few hours to bring yourself up to speed. Most of my stuff comes from Newegg with a few items from AMAZON or Tiger if their prices are lots less. Nice thing with Newegg is that many of their items are free shipping and AMAZON if it's over $25. Someday - I'll try an OS besides XP, but Microsoft hasn't done anything better for me yet, but so far 7 sounds pretty stable - maybe next year I'll update:cool:

I also use newegg. great prices. I am running windows 7 64 bit pro. When i first installed it i was not happy with flash and java. but they have since updated their software so that i can run it on 64 bit. My son runs vista and i hate it. So far win 7 has been very stable and easy to use.

Vista is the preverbial lemon of the microsoft line, sort of like Meleniun, but shoved out before the bugs were worked out. 7 does seem to work well so far! XP is still a great system.

Dave when you talked about the grand kids, it reminded me of when I was a teacher at an after school learning center, where we had a computer lab. Oh the problems those kids did with the computers, but nothing like the little tykes in San Jose at HP. My company had made a deal with HP, and decided to send me to their school/daycare where these little computer geniuses had locked the Teachers out of their computers and created colorful icons on the desk top making fun of the teachers. I had one kid trying to get at a computer I had just cleaned up. I installed a parental control/ password software to keep the kids out of the system files etc. This one kid was determined to get the password. The teacher was such an idiot, that with in 5 minutes she told the kid the password inadvertently. I changed it immediately and found a smarter soul to entrust the program. I was there for 8 hours pulling gum out of cd drives, paper clips out of floppy drives, and erasing obscinaties from desk tops. They called a week later and wanted me to come back. I declined.:D

the motherboard in my computer went out a week or so go. I built the computer in december 2008 with what was then good parts ( Asus mobo ect... ), but now, it's outdated to the point, I can't just replace the mobo and put it back togther. it is still fast enough to be ' in date ' ( AMD Athlon x2 6000+ ) but it is the old 125w chip, and the mobo's that can support over 95w are few and far between and expensive. also the ram I have is DDR2, and those mobo's are a bit hard to find/ more expensive than DDR3..

So when I get around to it, I will build a new computer. I'm going to get a case with better airflow also. current case only vents the front from underneath the face, which I was never impressed with.. along with that, a more current motherboard, but I'll probably go with a biostar this time. I have used them with success in the past. Athlon x3 3.0 GHZ ( can't remember model number ) and I will unlock the 4th core, and use my Hard drives, vid card, power supply, DVD and digital fan controller.

back when I was in high school, I used to try to outsmart the computer techs ( nice guys, but out of there league a bit. they were hardware guys ).. always fun to play with the registry. just put shutdown.exe in a run command, and they had something to fix.. at first they were convinced it was a virus, but then realized it was a tech savy student but never figured out who it was..