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We Haz Windows 7 . . .
Or rather, what got done with this year's bonus check from the Litter Box . . .
Mom and I took the little brother out to Wallyworld Wednesday when I got off from work. While she went toward the grocery department, the brother and I headed straight for the Electronics. His clunky old Gateway desktop is almost 9 years old now (I bought it new in March 2001) and was more than ready to be retired.
With my regular check, bonus check and my other week's vacation pay cashed in, we had plenty in the bank and had figured around $500-550 for a new computer. My brother spotted a Dell Inspiron 537 package for $498 and it was listed online as limited stock on hand.
Unfortunately, the store closest to us was out of stock but one of the employees called around and the store closest to Dad's house had one Dell bundle left. We had 30 minutes to get there to claim it, so we scooted up front to pay for what little Mom had already and flew over there.
Got there in just under 30 minutes (after almost 5 minutes of being held up in line at the other store behind 2 customers who were arguing over a price on a toddler sippy cup and a traffic crunch on US 29 on the way over there, but I digress) and snagged the last Dell Insprion 537 desktop bundle that was probably available in Greensboro until Black Friday.
I was out of breath by the time I got to that Electronics counter from almost running with my shopping cart as fast as I could . . . yeah, I could have waited a week and fought crowds on Black Friday for an HP for $100 less, but I hate crowds and I will gladly pay that extra hundred bucks to keep myself out of jail (where I would have ended up because I would have probably tried to kill somebody at 5 a.m. who got in my path.)
But the associates there was very nice and since we had some more shopping to do, let me pay for the computer first and they held it for me behind the counter until we were through with our other shopping.
So the three of us got our shopping done . . . we browsed through the DVD's for a bit and Mom found one she wanted (Icon w/Patrick Swayze) so we got it, then went around the store to see what else they had there (and this one is much bigger than the one we usually shop at and everything was on the opposite side of the other store too. We almost needed either a tour guide or a TomTom to find our way around.
)
By the time I'd went back to get the computer and get it to the car after my brother taking everything else we'd bought out to the car, it was after 5:30. I'd been up since 3:45 a.m. and going nonstop since . . . I was getting pretty tired.
Got the computer to the car . . .and had to get my brother to get the box out of the shopping cart (it was angled in such a way I couldn't get it pulled out) the box was too tall and wide to fit in the trunk of the Corolla either way. And, as I couldn't find any string to tie the trunk lid with, the only other option was the back seat.
My brother opened one of the back doors for me and I struggled with that box and had to angle it to fit through the doorway, but once it got inside the car, I could set it straight up in the back seat. The passenger's front seat leaned forward a little bit, but my brother managed with it. We got the rest of the groceries loaded in the trunk (and it was a LOT of bags) and headed home.
Finally made it in the door at 6:45 after a detour to locate the nearest Taco Bell, which ended up being located just off the highway on 421 South, got everything unloaded, put away, ate dinner and watched a bit of Earl, then we changed out the computer in my brother's room.
Didn't take long to set up at all once I got all the pieces unboxed and set up on his desk and cables connected (and all the peripherals are USB now.) Removed at least 10 miles of scotch invisible tape from the monitor and the midtower both . . . hooked up the wireless router and pushed the button.
Once it went through the first time setup, the desktop appeared and then it took maybe 30 minutes to go through the online registration, remove McAfee and download and install Avast antivirus . ..
Thought I was done and left my brother to it . . . not ten minutes later, he comes to me with the first problem:
He can't hear anything from the speakers . . .
I go back in his room, fiddle with the plug in (there's two on the back and almost the same shade of light bluish green that the male pug on the speaker is.)
No good . . . go searching through the half dozen manuals/pamphlets . . . find a folded piece of paper . . .
How To Set Up Your Speakers.
Now when I hooked them up a short time earlier, I couldn't find a volume control and I'd thought I'd searched all over both speakers. Turned out according to this paper (which I think was written with blondes in mind) on the right speaker there's a knob on top that you have to turn.
Okay . . . I find it and turn it . . . and we have SOUND. I had the sound properties window already open and was testing various Windows sounds to see if I could hear anything.
Yesterday I heard no issues . . .
Today while taking a break on the porch, my brother announced he was having trouble setting up the Windows Live Mail . . .
Now why he couldn't download something simple like Thunderbird, I don't know. He'd have to go and try to use the most complicated thing man ever created after algebra.
So it's fiddle with settings, nothing worked. Pull up Firefox window and try to find help through Blue Ball . . . which was about as good as reading through prescription information and I understood less.
Finally figured it out through Yahoo . . . I had to log in using the email he wanted, scroll to the bottom of the page THEN go to the help section.
Thought it was fixed, so I went back to try to do a little more on the house and then stopped again.
He still can't send mail . . . he can receive it, but can't send it.
Round Two of the Battle of the Email Port settings . . . I know my eyesight's bad, but really can the help pages make their font size any smaller, even though it's bold type?
Apparently they made it small enough so I could get 495 confused with 465 (which was the correct port number for outgoing mail) You'd think Windows 7 would KNOW what port I want since it's supposed to be so smart and simple. I mean, it automatically set up the LAN settings during first run and when I opened up IE8 to go to the home networking page to log it in, it was already logged in and running.
But yet it can't automatically figure out that the volume control on the speakers themselves weren't turned up and that's why we couldn't hear any sounds. Go figure.
So what's in store for Windows 8? Either teach it to cook dinner, answer the door or pour me a glass of wine and bring it to me along with my cigarettes and slippers. Oh, and give me a back rub too.
So far my brother loves 7 . . . if he makes it a week without asking me to fix something, then that means 7 is awesome.
Mom and I took the little brother out to Wallyworld Wednesday when I got off from work. While she went toward the grocery department, the brother and I headed straight for the Electronics. His clunky old Gateway desktop is almost 9 years old now (I bought it new in March 2001) and was more than ready to be retired.
With my regular check, bonus check and my other week's vacation pay cashed in, we had plenty in the bank and had figured around $500-550 for a new computer. My brother spotted a Dell Inspiron 537 package for $498 and it was listed online as limited stock on hand.
Unfortunately, the store closest to us was out of stock but one of the employees called around and the store closest to Dad's house had one Dell bundle left. We had 30 minutes to get there to claim it, so we scooted up front to pay for what little Mom had already and flew over there.
Got there in just under 30 minutes (after almost 5 minutes of being held up in line at the other store behind 2 customers who were arguing over a price on a toddler sippy cup and a traffic crunch on US 29 on the way over there, but I digress) and snagged the last Dell Insprion 537 desktop bundle that was probably available in Greensboro until Black Friday.
I was out of breath by the time I got to that Electronics counter from almost running with my shopping cart as fast as I could . . . yeah, I could have waited a week and fought crowds on Black Friday for an HP for $100 less, but I hate crowds and I will gladly pay that extra hundred bucks to keep myself out of jail (where I would have ended up because I would have probably tried to kill somebody at 5 a.m. who got in my path.)
But the associates there was very nice and since we had some more shopping to do, let me pay for the computer first and they held it for me behind the counter until we were through with our other shopping.
So the three of us got our shopping done . . . we browsed through the DVD's for a bit and Mom found one she wanted (Icon w/Patrick Swayze) so we got it, then went around the store to see what else they had there (and this one is much bigger than the one we usually shop at and everything was on the opposite side of the other store too. We almost needed either a tour guide or a TomTom to find our way around.
) By the time I'd went back to get the computer and get it to the car after my brother taking everything else we'd bought out to the car, it was after 5:30. I'd been up since 3:45 a.m. and going nonstop since . . . I was getting pretty tired.
Got the computer to the car . . .and had to get my brother to get the box out of the shopping cart (it was angled in such a way I couldn't get it pulled out) the box was too tall and wide to fit in the trunk of the Corolla either way. And, as I couldn't find any string to tie the trunk lid with, the only other option was the back seat.
My brother opened one of the back doors for me and I struggled with that box and had to angle it to fit through the doorway, but once it got inside the car, I could set it straight up in the back seat. The passenger's front seat leaned forward a little bit, but my brother managed with it. We got the rest of the groceries loaded in the trunk (and it was a LOT of bags) and headed home.
Finally made it in the door at 6:45 after a detour to locate the nearest Taco Bell, which ended up being located just off the highway on 421 South, got everything unloaded, put away, ate dinner and watched a bit of Earl, then we changed out the computer in my brother's room.
Didn't take long to set up at all once I got all the pieces unboxed and set up on his desk and cables connected (and all the peripherals are USB now.) Removed at least 10 miles of scotch invisible tape from the monitor and the midtower both . . . hooked up the wireless router and pushed the button.
Once it went through the first time setup, the desktop appeared and then it took maybe 30 minutes to go through the online registration, remove McAfee and download and install Avast antivirus . ..
Thought I was done and left my brother to it . . . not ten minutes later, he comes to me with the first problem:
He can't hear anything from the speakers . . .
I go back in his room, fiddle with the plug in (there's two on the back and almost the same shade of light bluish green that the male pug on the speaker is.)
No good . . . go searching through the half dozen manuals/pamphlets . . . find a folded piece of paper . . .
How To Set Up Your Speakers.
Now when I hooked them up a short time earlier, I couldn't find a volume control and I'd thought I'd searched all over both speakers. Turned out according to this paper (which I think was written with blondes in mind) on the right speaker there's a knob on top that you have to turn.
Okay . . . I find it and turn it . . . and we have SOUND. I had the sound properties window already open and was testing various Windows sounds to see if I could hear anything.
Yesterday I heard no issues . . .
Today while taking a break on the porch, my brother announced he was having trouble setting up the Windows Live Mail . . .
Now why he couldn't download something simple like Thunderbird, I don't know. He'd have to go and try to use the most complicated thing man ever created after algebra.
So it's fiddle with settings, nothing worked. Pull up Firefox window and try to find help through Blue Ball . . . which was about as good as reading through prescription information and I understood less.
Finally figured it out through Yahoo . . . I had to log in using the email he wanted, scroll to the bottom of the page THEN go to the help section.
Thought it was fixed, so I went back to try to do a little more on the house and then stopped again.
He still can't send mail . . . he can receive it, but can't send it.
Round Two of the Battle of the Email Port settings . . . I know my eyesight's bad, but really can the help pages make their font size any smaller, even though it's bold type?
Apparently they made it small enough so I could get 495 confused with 465 (which was the correct port number for outgoing mail) You'd think Windows 7 would KNOW what port I want since it's supposed to be so smart and simple. I mean, it automatically set up the LAN settings during first run and when I opened up IE8 to go to the home networking page to log it in, it was already logged in and running.
But yet it can't automatically figure out that the volume control on the speakers themselves weren't turned up and that's why we couldn't hear any sounds. Go figure.
So what's in store for Windows 8? Either teach it to cook dinner, answer the door or pour me a glass of wine and bring it to me along with my cigarettes and slippers. Oh, and give me a back rub too.
So far my brother loves 7 . . . if he makes it a week without asking me to fix something, then that means 7 is awesome.
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