Monday 24 September 2001

Pic of the day: My computer desk at home is already pretty full. So why did I buy yet another computer? Read and find out ...

Against better judgement

So today I bought a computer for me and SuperWoman. Heh. It's not quite as bad as it sounds: Not both at the same time! I'll install and test software, then send it to her. She will have it for a while, until she can afford her own. I'm not sure when, probably sometime next year.

She's starting her job in Sweden by October 1st, and will immediately earn more than I do. Well, pre-tax. Thanks to the burdensome Swedish taxes, she will actually have less than I, post-tax. But still a lot more than she is used to as a student. She will still be pretty squeezed the first months. I remember moving to get my first job myself. Now I was not nearly as well paid, even by the standards of 1980. But even simple things like curtains were out of my reach for the first few months. I slept on a mattress on the floor. It took a lot of time (and fleamarkets, in my case) to build up a full set of furniture. Then various forms of entertainment: An electric organ (as in music, OK?), stereo, a broad sample of CDs, then a computer ... It took years to stuff the place with all the things I liked.

SuperWoman will need a car, first and foremost. She'll buy that herself. I will supply a computer with Internet access, so we can stay in touch. If I'm lucky and cunning, I may get her to use IParty voice chat, which would be significantly cheaper than telephone. Internet is fairly reasonable here in Scandinavia; not like in the U.S., but quite a bit better than in Germany. But even without IParty, there are e-mails to be had. Lovely e-mails. Yesss ...

***

Oh yes, the computer. This is where the "against better judgement" comes in. Do not believe for a moment that there is any better judgement than to buy a computer for the wonderful and justly deserving SuperWoman. But buying a Toshiba Satellite???

Yes, laugh if you will. I know I have graduated in advanced namecalling with my current Toshiba Satellite, and Toshiba in general. But, well, it was cheap. And it was available. (Remind me to never marry. Heh.)

This Toshiba cost kr 13000 (ca $1500) including sales tax, about the same that I gave for the previous one two years ago. There isn't much difference either, I'm sad to say. The screen is visibly better, RAM is doubled from 32 to 64 MB (rather essential these days) and the harddisk is up from 4 GB to a still paltry 6 GB. Oh, and the processor speed is up from 300 to 650 MHz. And it got a DVD reader instead of just CD-ROM. (Not that any of us need it, but I guess it is potentially nifty.) So, yeah, I guess it's OK that it costs the same. But revolutionary it ain't. I'd rather have the old model at half price. Why don't anyone ever think of that?

I have heard from various sources that the Toshiba aren't always shoddy. That I must have had a Monday machine. From day 1, the parallell port was unable to work with the Zip drive that I had. But the time was ripe for a new USB 250MB Zip drive anyway, so I did not return the computer to the shop. This was a mistake, as it turned out. When I had moved all my stuff onto it and started using it, it stopped playing audio CDs, eventually prompting me to buy the stereo which I regretted for a long time. Much later, when I got The Sims, I went to the shop and bought a memory upgrade. It did not work. Evidently the connector was defective, and the warranty was of course expired by then. The modem connector broke at least two plugs by normal use, before it eventually broke itself. I now have to use an external modem, with the extra cable spaghetti involved in that. Also the harddisk has some defects (admittedly this and the modem thing happened after it fell down from the living room table to the floor). Now it will hang if subjected to long disk scans or defragments. It has also grown slower and slower and slower.

Actually, I searched for "memory manager windows" today on Google, and found an article about tuning up the Windows 95 memory management with a few small changes. Some of it works in Win98 too, and my old Toshiba now seems faster than it has been in months. I considered buying MemKit, a memory management program, but I have no guarantee that they are not just ripping me off. I can't try before I buy, so I don't buy unless I get a recommendation from independent parties. And anyway, it seems better now.

***

The new Toshiba is sleeker, cuter, and with some nifty additions. The controls have been re-arranged and seem more logically placed. They are certainly easier to see, the most common ones. There are a few small new controls that let you use it as a CD player without turning on the computer part at all. Nifty! Documentation is enhanced.

I am sad to say that it runs Windows ME (Millenium Edition) though. I would have preferred Win98, the last build of which is renowned for stability and compatibility. I already ran into a problem today, and I suspect that to actually be a WinME problem rather than a Toshiba problem. If not, back to the store it goes!

You see, I installed Word97. We had some spare Word97 packs at work, where we had bought double: One for each PC, and a site version for the server. SuperWoman is used to Word97: I had that installed on the old PC she got from me, the one her father threw away. (Hey, you don't do that with other people's computers! If he does it with this one, I'm gonna knee his groin for sure, and tell him off in Swedish.) Also I am used to Word97 from work, though I don't use it at home. Well, installation seemed to work just fine. Then when I started Word, it came up with WORD 2000 and asked me for some authentication key for that program. But I don't have Word2000, nor have I any plans to ever buy it. So what's up with that? Is this a known bug or something? Mail me if you know. (You may mail me anyway, to express your sympathy and your general dislike of Microsoft Windows ME.)

Then when I used the desktop icon to create a new Internet connection, it tried to call some American phone number, judging from the number of digits. Given that I live in Norway and had installed the Norwegian version of the operating system, that was pretty stupid. Yes indeed, that was as stupid as people like to portray MicroSoft as being. I am sorry to say that, because I like MS from back when they were David and IBM was Goliath. I hope there are geeks in that small Swedish city, or I shall have to guide SW through adding her Swedish Internet Service Provider. I would have added them myself if I knew who, but I don't think she knows yet. Adding an ISP through the "My Computer" icon worked flawlessly, though, and took half a minute.

That's pretty much the main events of the day, as far as I am concerned.