The Price of Modernity

Ugh. So after the new Dell PC fiasco of early July (Windows 7 incompatibility issues), we decided to see how long the old PC would last before replacing it. As luck would have it, that was exactly 4 days. Not that it completely crapped out, mind you, but the noises started again (whirrrrrrring very loudly when you turn it on or restart it) and everything on the machine was S-L-O-W and my C: drive had run out of space.

So, we got a new machine. It, too, has Windows 7, and after our experience with the Dell (3 days of trying to get it to work with ... well, just about everything ... including about an hour with the Geek Squad - to no avail), we thought we were prepared for the big changeover. This one's an HP Pavilion, and we've had good luck with HPs before.

Yeah, that was *before.* As in "before Windows 7." Good golly, I'm very glad DH is heading off to Ottawa tomorrow; I swear, one more 'issue' with this freakin' thing and I'm going to kill someone. I'd rather it not be him, so I"m glad he'll be out of town.

Here's what we've had to replace (or will have to):

• Laser printer (no driver upgrade available for the old one)
• Inkjet printer (ditto)
• Adobe Acrobat Professional (no driver upgrade available for 7.0)
• My beloved PDA (double ditto)
• Speakers (no power source on new machine)
• My old AOL email account (because I thought I couldn't send emails from new machine)

I'm planning to replace my old (2005!) PDA with an iPod Touch, but now I'm reading all sorts of forum posts on how it's not compatible with Win7, only Vista and XP. Great.

I'm sure there's more; when I tried to launch Pandora a few hours ago, nothing happened. As it turns out, there is now a 'regular' MSIE 8.0 and a 64-bit MSIE 8.0. Some things work on one but not the other (like sending AOL webmail), or vice versa, and some things work on both. Luckily, I haven't found anything that doesn't work on either.

Except gmail. Now I can't load gmail up on either browser. Oh, and here on blogger? I can't cut and paste. In 'regular' browser mode. Maybe I can on the other one. What a PITA. And I can hear my wireless mouse through my new speakers. *sigh*

Yeah, we're keeping the old PC alive on the other desk. I have a feeling I'll be using it a lot in the next few days. Weeks?

If you see me in the near future, steer clear and try not to piss me off. It's a very short leap from where I am now to manslaughter.