Computer

I like my computer again.

Those of you who know me know that over the last few months, I have been MASSIVELY frustrated with my Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop computer. And I do mean MASSIVELY frustrated.

It's not a bad computer. In its former life, it served Brandon faithfully for his first few years in college. When he upgraded to some ridiculously modern Mac, I bought the old laptop, thus eliminating the conflict between Cathy and I, who were having to share one desktop between the two of us.

When I first started using it, things were great. It was fast, wireless, and ALL MINE! No sharing, no begging. Cathy and I were both happy with the arrangement. Really, it ran well for a couple years.

But, over the last few months, two problems have cropped up that have driven me NUTS. First, the wireless card has become flaky. I'd be on the internet one minute, and off the next. Sometimes it would reconnect by itself, but other times (many times) I had to reboot. And rebooting this computer is about a 15 minute process...

The other problem cropped up when I "upgraded" my antivirus software from Norton 2006 to Norton 360. In short, Norton 360 is the worst software I've ever used. It completely slowed my machine down to a standstill, worse than any virus I ever had! Its biggest problem was that it would decide, on its own, to run a virus scan in the background, WHILE I WAS USING THE COMPUTER. Not at midnight, not after detecting 30 minutes of non-use... And to make it worse, there is no way to change the settings to prevent these background scans. After reading literally hundreds of negative reviews of N360 on the internet, I decided I had had enough.

So, Sunday, I made two changes. First, I ran a wire under the house from the router in the bedroom to "my seat" on the couch, where I keep my laptop. Is my laptop wireless now? No, its wired. Is it faster and more reliable connecting to the internet? YEAH BABY! One down, one to go.

The second big change involved completely uninstalling Norton 360 (even though it is paid for through next year), and installing the highly-rated, free anti-virus program "Avast!". Avast is much much much easier on system resources than Norton 360 ever thought about being.

The overall result of these two changes is that my old Dell is faster and more reliable than it has been in many months. The internet is fast, always connected, and rebooting doesn't take 15 minutes (and actually isn't required very often now). Needless to say, I'm a pretty happy camper!

So, no excuses now for not blogging!!!