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Be forewarned, this is a bitch about my computer.
It's been one of those weeks where it's always something. Always something to keep me away from the keyboard. Not tonight. Tonight I write. If I can. Among other things, the computer has been giving me problems.

My last computer was a Compaq, 600 mhz. When it appeared to be going toes up I went to Sam's Club and bought a Stratitec. As you might guess, the primary reason for that decision was the cheap wife. Have to make her happy. I get computer, she gets cheap. Soooooo, the Stratitec was the way for me to get another machine. The Stratitec is a case, motherboard, and a few other parts. Install a processor, hardrive, CD/DVD drive, RAM, connect a monitor, load the drivers and away you go. That's the theory anyway.

It's not hard to do. The manual is pretty explicit. They do a good job of holding the hand of their budget-conscious clients and making sure it gets done right. Only one problem. Operating system compatibility. The sound wouldn't work in XP. Or the modem. The modem wasn't a problem, I have a DSL connection. But the sound was a concern.

Trainboy has a variety of train and Tonka games. He wants sound when he plays them. Whooo whoooo! he loves that train sound. He has gotten by okay. So has Ms. Pikachu, because Ms. Pikachu got the Compaq. Right there you say, "hey, two computers, one monitor, what happened there?" And therein lies one of those cosmic jokes that makes you wince.

She wanted her computer on her writing desk. That's not much desk space. She needed a space-saving monitor. We went to Best Buy on another pilgrimage for happiness. She surveyed the possibilities and chose the cheapest 17" flat panel. She did an admirable job of walking the line between being Daughter of Cheap Wife, and Daughter of Mr. Like It? Buy it. We left with a 17" flat panel that still cost more than my new computer. Plugged it in, worked beautifully. Impressive picture. Little speakers built into the side that aren't hi-fi, but she doesn't care. Train Boy doesn't care either, it gives a fine picture of trains, and whoo whooo! he loves that sound. One happy 11 year-old, one happy 5 year-old. I'd be jealous, but I use a 19" monitor, it's a space hog, but it's a big-picture space hog.

Back to the Stratitec. It has had the nasty habit of crashing and refusing to come back. The hard drive light blinks, the CD drive blinks several times, the process is repeated ad infinitum. The problem was certainly that it was trying to first boot from the CD. I wound up disconnecting the hard drive, CD, and resetting the BIOS with the jumper before the thing would boot up. When it booted up I changed the BIOS boot order, floppy first, hard drive, CD. Then reconnected everything. Just don't turn it off completely, always put it in standby and we'll get along fine.

It worked just fine until a new piece of software was installed. Restart required. Back to the non-flirtatious blinking. Were it flirtatious it would be charming. It is not, so it is not. Keep the hammers away from me.

You might say, "Fool, download updated drivers for XP." As though I were too stupid to do that. I did, it helped for a little bit, then the same problem.

You might then say, "Contact customer support." I went to their web-site, and e-mailed their tech support. Never got a reply. Nothing like good service. Sometimes you don't get any more than you pay for.

So after this last crash I reset the BIOS, disabled the onboard modem, and sound, and installed a Soundblaster card. And yes, that's right, the modem and sound it came with are not cards but mounted on the motherboard. A cheaper way of doing things, but I'd rather be able to just pull them and be done with them.

Since the last modification I haven't had any problems completely shutting the system down and restarting it. It runs faster than my old Compaq. It ought to, everything in it is faster, so that's nice. But considering the headaches, and the total paid for it, it would have made more sense to buy a complete CPU off the shelf and gotten a software bundle too. It came with nothing but device drivers and Linux.

As long as it continues to work I'll be happy. But I could only recommend going this route to someone who doesn't mind taking the case off and tinkering with it, a lot.

So I'm happy, but always waiting for the next crash. In contrast, Ms. Pikachu is very happy. 600 mhz is more than enough for what she needs, and she has a nice 17" flat panel. It's good to be Ms. Pikachu. Because she's unreservedly happy.

Publicserf






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