Computers'r'Us

My monitor died a week or so back, so since the computer show at the Cobb County Civic Center was coming up, in the interim I used the (really bad) monitor from the lumbering old computer that we keep in the spare room. (It has games on it; should we have a party and the kids get bored, it's there for them to play with.)

Debated most of the weekend whether to get a used unit (they had monitors with acceptably good picture for as little as $35), or invest the money in a new one. I really would like a whole new system, although I'm doing perfectly well on what I have–James just needs to get it working right. The poor thing's been upgraded so many times it really can't handle anything new. We weren't able to install the new USB card, even though James upgraded me to Windows98, it's still telling me there's a new video card (there isn't), and now a new monitor (although the monitor comes with no installable software). It needs to be "taken down" and redone. (To that end, I have been burning all files I want to keep to a CD-R.)

I finally went with the new monitor for investment purposes: A friend has asked me to build a web page for his upcoming business later in the year, and I need to make sure the page looks the best it can. If I chose an "iffy" used monitor, the colors might be off. I bought an Acer flat-screen model, which has the added advantage of being so thin I can push it back and actually read it with the top lenses of my bifocals instead of having to tilt my chin up and look at it through the bottom lenses. I was getting a crick in my neck from the previous monitor.

James fared less well. He's had a new hard drive for months, but wanted Windows 2000 as an OS. He used it in his A+/Net+/Cisco classes and liked it, as well as needs to work on it for familiarity purposes.

Well, he purchased a copy at the computer show, put in the new hard drive, and loaded the software (which took several hours). Now, when we were getting the drivers together for reloading, we found the software for his video card had done a bunk. Hoping Win2000 would have some sort of generic video driver until he could get a copy of the proper software, he was rather astonished to find the only support Win2000 had for his card (an Nvidia TNT) was 16 color! Undeterred, he fired up dial-up networking, got to Nvidia's website, and downloaded what Nvidia said were the drivers. They seemed to install fine, but the system keeps converting to the 16 color driver and the Nvidia driver says it cannot start. (Don't you love computers? They tell you you can't do something but they don't tell you why. They just give you an error number.) After three hours of trying to load it, he gave up.

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:40:00 AM

Comments: Post a Comment