The New PC

For those of you who don't know (and given I boasted of it on Facebook and tweeted it as well, I doubt there are many), I bought a new computer this weekend. This brings me to an interesting observation (well, interesting to me), despite their importance in modern society, you almost never see individuals in movies or TV shows dealing with replacing an old PC with a new one. Indeed, I could see where it would at least make for a good episode of a sitcom.

The plain fact is that many of us keep much of our lives (if not all of it) on our computers. This is particularly true for me, as I am a writer. When I get a new computer, I then have to back up any projects on which I am working so they can be moved to the new machine. Above all else, I had to remember to transfer the file for my book on power pop, as well as the files of notes I have. Of course, we also use computers for entertainment, so I had to back up all of my music. I kid you not, it took three hours to completely back up everything (I have around 3000 songs). I also had to move my pictures over to the new machine, those I use on this blog and on Retrophilia (my Tumblr blog), as well as my personal ones . Curiously, I discovered I have far more pictures of classic actresses than classic actors...

Of course, even once one has transferred everything he or she needs to the new computer, he or she might find they don't have the programmes to utilise the files. At one time a common complaint was that PCs came bundled with too much software, programmes one would never use. My old computer came with both Quicken and Microsoft Money, two programmes that do the same thing...and two programmes I would never use. Today things are very different. PCs don't come bundled with enough software.  I had to dig out my Microsoft Word disc so I would have a decent word processing programme (the PC came with nothing but Wordpad and Notepad...). I also had to download Napster so I could play my music (in all fairness, the PC did come with Windows Media Player, but I much prefer Napster).


Anyhow, here it is, 10:42 PM my time and I still haven't finished the process of moving from one machine to another. The new PC has most of what I need now, but there are some files I forgot and are still on the old computer. I also need to install a few more programmes that I don't use that often, as well as the printer. As to the new computer, itself, it is a very nice machine. While it is a lower end Hewlett Packard, it is very fast, even compared to my nephew's more high end machine. It also runs very, very smoothly.  In fact, the only complaint I have is that it came bundled with Norton for its security programme. Mind you, I have had very bad experiences with Norton. It seems that when it updates or scans it robs memory and/or bandwidth. And my PC would still be infected by viruses or Trojans. It has since been my policy to uninstall Norton and install McAfee. McAfee coes not rob memory or bandwith when updating or scanning. And I have never had a machine attacked or infected which had McAfee for security

So what does any of this have to do with pop culture? Not much really. It does have a lot to do with this blog. With a new computer I will no longer have to worry that the machine is going to shut down midway through blog entries, which means I can go back to writing more and longer blog entries. I don't know about my readers, but I know that makes me happy.