Frankenputer

Ron Eggers

SPFG, Supreme Picture Framing God
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Wisconsin
I have an HP notebook. I don't remember how old it is, but it came loaded with Windows ME - the operating system from He ll.

About a year ago, I loaded XP onto it, which breathed new life into this notebook.

The 10-gig hard drive filled up quickly, so I added an external hard drive. I chose the 40-gig Smartdisk Firelite 'cause it's small, durable and fast-enough to run applications. That needed USB 2.0 instead of 1.1 for best performance, so I put a USB 2.0 adapter in the card slot.

I added an external numerical keypad, a Wacom tablet for Photoshop, a USB Zip Drive, a Visioneer Strobe scanner and a bunch of other stuff I didn't need.

A few months ago, the notebook's monitor crapped out, so I got a 15" flat screen monitor for it.

The keyboard started getting flaky, so I added an external keyboard and optical mouse.

The whole thing (with printer) takes up most of a 3x5 ft desktop. I'm sure, for what I spent to keep this antique running, I could have bought a very nice new notebook and an even nicer desktop, but then I'd have to reinstall all the software I use.

Maybe I'll get out the wide-angle lens and take a picture of it.
 
It's like the guy who said he had the original hatchet that George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree - of course it had had 3 new handles and 2 new heads.

betty

but wait, that doesn't have anything to do with computers...
 
Wow that computer has been through a lot
As long as it does what you need it to do, that's what counts!

You should grab one of the "mike deals" I have em for laptops too, if interested. (usually $699 or so for a decent Dell)

Desktops start at about $349 with shipping. (you have the monitor already)

Mike
 
Mike, Ron has had fun getting all these components together, talking to each other and "working". Getting a Dell would be too easy, he needs a challenge!!!

I'd suggest getting the new Mac Mini. Connect all the PC stuff to a USB/Firewire hub Then get the vga adapter for the flat screen.<small>then get a fire wire USB adapter<small> then another external hub/network switch to plug the pc hardware into..</small></small>

Have fun Ron, oh and don't forget to answer the phone once in a while!
 
We can relate to this one! Gary's Toshiba notebook is becoming a a Frankenputer. The monitor died a year ago and he has a external one attached to it. The internal cd/dvd driver is also dead, so he has an external one of those also. Unfortunately, that just stopped burning cd/dvds also. It will still read them, just not burn them. So he's been using the hard cards from his cameras to transfer info to it.

We also have another computer that had ME on it. We had installed XP on it and it ran ok for a while but about 3 weeks ago it complete died. It developed a registry root failure. Luckily, there is a new computer guy at the local Radio Shack who was able to get it up and running again and put XP pro on it. Lost all our data and all our programs on it but we had all the important stuff backed up. There was getting to be alot of clutter on there anyway.

Does it mean your getting old when your new computer guy graduated high school with your daughter?
 
If you have XP on your computer, you should run Accessories/System Tools/Files and Settings Wizard periodically. Works with a CD burner - I use a 750MB Zip drive (much faster). If you then have to reload Windows from scratch you will have files, which I KNOW that you are already backing up, but also invaluable goodies such as favorites, cookies with passwords, E-mail settings and many other useful tidbits in a compressed file that is easy to restore with the same Wizard.

Pat :D
 
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