Maybe some of you will sympathize with me here. You know all those graphics of vintage appliances that some of you think are nice? Well, thanks to the asswipes at Microsoft, they may have come to an end.
Let me give you the long version:
A couple of weeks ago, my computer started acting funny. I started noticing lots of pop-up ads all over my internet including here on AW. Not only that, every time I came to AW, I had to re-submit my ID and password. So I called Comcast, my internet provider, and very long story short, one of their agents tried to reset my modem from their location, but forgot, or neglected to note that they were also my telephone provider so they dropped the call in the middle of resetting the high-speed LAN modem.
Next thing I know, I have no internet access at all, and spend about 3 hours on the phone with the Comcast technicians who spend a lot of the time trying to convince me that nothing that they could have done would have destroyed/removed all the internet access drivers on my computer which, as luck would have it are all gone. System restore won't work. I strong-armed them into sending a technician over to my house the next day, solicitous YOUNG man, who spent most of his time on his cell phone with Google, looking up internet information and repeated what his bosses had said to me, that it couldn't have been Comcast's fault, had to be the computer. Tough luck. Go fish.
Now, I will admit that I'm a cheapskate and I tend to keep computers, PC computers that is, longer than I should most probably. But, being a vintage kind of guy, my attitude has been, "why trash something that's still working?" Here, I will note that one thing I have learned is that I have to learn to prepare for the eventualy transfer of files and programs from one computer to another. One solution that I have decided to pursue is to have two computers from now on, like the rest of the USA.
So I buy a new computer. One that is recommended by a close friend of mine who is much more computer savvy than I, a Gateway PC with Windows 7 installed on it (we both agreed that Windows 8 wasn't what I wanted). I am going to buy a Macintosh soon, eventually, because everybody I know seems to think Mac's have a superior operating system and for someone like me who likes to do artwork on the computer, they are all around a better choice. They are also, for a holdout like myself, a better choice for someone who likes to hold on to computers for a long time.
The first wall I hit at full speed is that Windows 7 doesn't want anything to do with all the backups I've done through the years. Instead of the easy recovery system that Windows XP used, now Windows 7 has a fancy schmancy new feature called "Windows Easy Transfer". FEH! After wasting 20 minutes and following all the prompts, this f((king utility leads me down a garden path to a dead end. Won't recognize my external hard drives. Won't even pretend that there are files in those folders. After crying "Uncle" and going to a computer store where a very nice, very smart, very helpful young man who hates MS almost as much as I do, he informs me that I have to purchase a special Windows Transfer Cable to connect my old computer to my new computer rendering all those f**king backups now pointless. I'm already pissed. Now I have to reconnect my old computer, buy or borrow another monitor so I can see what's what and go through this unnecessarily complicated restoration process, because Windows 7, in it's wisdom, has decided that Windows XP is just too old to bother with. More on that when I get to it.
The next wall I hit is trying to reinstall the graphics program that I've used for 15 years and that I've used here to produce those nice pictures of vintage appliances. Guess what? Windows 7 is a 64-bit program and won't accept the 3 installation disks for FreeHand graphics!!! And Macromedia, the SF-based software company that produced the FreeHand package was bought by Adobe years ago and, after 2 hours on the phone with Adobe personnel today (who at least have the smarts to create a case-number and to request email address and phone number in case the calls get dropped in the middle of things) I discover there's no "work-around" utility to update or to install my beloved old program and I'm going to have to drop a huge dime to buy Adobe Illustrator and pray, PRAY that what I was told was correct and my FreeHand files will be readable by Illustrator so I won't lose 15 years of graphics. Most of those graphics have been translated to JPEG and TIFF and GIF formats, but I can't work on the translations. This sucks.
In the scheme of things I realize that these computer problems are small potatoes, but wouldn't you think that when you lay down hundreds of dollars for software and go to the trouble to register the program so they know you're legit, the company(s) concerned would keep you posted when you need to update the programs before they simply abandon you? As Miranda Priestly would ask, "Am I reaching for the stars? I don't think so."
Let me give you the long version:
A couple of weeks ago, my computer started acting funny. I started noticing lots of pop-up ads all over my internet including here on AW. Not only that, every time I came to AW, I had to re-submit my ID and password. So I called Comcast, my internet provider, and very long story short, one of their agents tried to reset my modem from their location, but forgot, or neglected to note that they were also my telephone provider so they dropped the call in the middle of resetting the high-speed LAN modem.
Next thing I know, I have no internet access at all, and spend about 3 hours on the phone with the Comcast technicians who spend a lot of the time trying to convince me that nothing that they could have done would have destroyed/removed all the internet access drivers on my computer which, as luck would have it are all gone. System restore won't work. I strong-armed them into sending a technician over to my house the next day, solicitous YOUNG man, who spent most of his time on his cell phone with Google, looking up internet information and repeated what his bosses had said to me, that it couldn't have been Comcast's fault, had to be the computer. Tough luck. Go fish.
Now, I will admit that I'm a cheapskate and I tend to keep computers, PC computers that is, longer than I should most probably. But, being a vintage kind of guy, my attitude has been, "why trash something that's still working?" Here, I will note that one thing I have learned is that I have to learn to prepare for the eventualy transfer of files and programs from one computer to another. One solution that I have decided to pursue is to have two computers from now on, like the rest of the USA.
So I buy a new computer. One that is recommended by a close friend of mine who is much more computer savvy than I, a Gateway PC with Windows 7 installed on it (we both agreed that Windows 8 wasn't what I wanted). I am going to buy a Macintosh soon, eventually, because everybody I know seems to think Mac's have a superior operating system and for someone like me who likes to do artwork on the computer, they are all around a better choice. They are also, for a holdout like myself, a better choice for someone who likes to hold on to computers for a long time.
The first wall I hit at full speed is that Windows 7 doesn't want anything to do with all the backups I've done through the years. Instead of the easy recovery system that Windows XP used, now Windows 7 has a fancy schmancy new feature called "Windows Easy Transfer". FEH! After wasting 20 minutes and following all the prompts, this f((king utility leads me down a garden path to a dead end. Won't recognize my external hard drives. Won't even pretend that there are files in those folders. After crying "Uncle" and going to a computer store where a very nice, very smart, very helpful young man who hates MS almost as much as I do, he informs me that I have to purchase a special Windows Transfer Cable to connect my old computer to my new computer rendering all those f**king backups now pointless. I'm already pissed. Now I have to reconnect my old computer, buy or borrow another monitor so I can see what's what and go through this unnecessarily complicated restoration process, because Windows 7, in it's wisdom, has decided that Windows XP is just too old to bother with. More on that when I get to it.
The next wall I hit is trying to reinstall the graphics program that I've used for 15 years and that I've used here to produce those nice pictures of vintage appliances. Guess what? Windows 7 is a 64-bit program and won't accept the 3 installation disks for FreeHand graphics!!! And Macromedia, the SF-based software company that produced the FreeHand package was bought by Adobe years ago and, after 2 hours on the phone with Adobe personnel today (who at least have the smarts to create a case-number and to request email address and phone number in case the calls get dropped in the middle of things) I discover there's no "work-around" utility to update or to install my beloved old program and I'm going to have to drop a huge dime to buy Adobe Illustrator and pray, PRAY that what I was told was correct and my FreeHand files will be readable by Illustrator so I won't lose 15 years of graphics. Most of those graphics have been translated to JPEG and TIFF and GIF formats, but I can't work on the translations. This sucks.
In the scheme of things I realize that these computer problems are small potatoes, but wouldn't you think that when you lay down hundreds of dollars for software and go to the trouble to register the program so they know you're legit, the company(s) concerned would keep you posted when you need to update the programs before they simply abandon you? As Miranda Priestly would ask, "Am I reaching for the stars? I don't think so."
