Ode to my PC

Oh hallowed screen
shining brightly through the night
I spend so much time staring at you
I can't imagine what my life might be like
if your light were to fade,
or your image freeze
or your body were to break
I dare say I'd cry for you
and probably bake a sad cake:


For you are my job
you are my life
you are my one and only
Oh PC please do not freeze
and make my evenings lonely


...yyeeeeaaaahhhh....now you see why I never pursued a poetry career.

Really though, I've spoken many times about my PC troubles here. How my last one died and the torrent of A/C adapters it took with it. It's still living on battery power and it is a good machine. Oh well, so far I haven't had any big hardware problems with this laptop. I don't really think my family stays constant with what kind of PC we get, however we always have used Windows as our operating system. I couldn't tell you why we started using Windows, but it's been the only OS we stick with. No Mac, or Linux, or Unix for this household. I do use Macs, but I'm not a big fan of them. To me, Macs are for people who don't know how to work a PC, or don't want an operating system they can dig deep into and fiddle with. But I love learning about my computer and manipulating its operating system in fun ways. I'm no tech geek, but I can still have fun with Windows and alter it in the ways I wish.

So I've gone through all stages of Windows, from 95, to NT, to 2000, to XP and now Vista. On my personal computer, I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate. J uses Vista Home Premium and my father uses Vista Business for the family desktop. While I wasn't completely for or against it, I've learned that it isn't a piece of crap like a lot of people seem to believe. I think it's offering more on the design side than XP did, but I don't see to many issues. And I'm able to work around compatibility issues, so I can play games designed for XP on my Vista machine without problem. Really, I think a lot of people who whine about Vista's shortcomings just haven't bothered to look up how to get around them.

Of course, no operating system is without it's fault and Vista is no different. Even with a fast processor, good hard drive and plenty of RAM, my computer decides it will freeze or give me weird little graphic glitches. The freezing problem is so common with any computer, it's hard to chalk it all up to Vista. The worst part is when it freezes at an inopportune time. Such as when I'm in the middle of working on a large Photoshop document and made some major change but hadn't saved yet. OOOooo and when that happens right when I also need to look something up for work or need to get that image to print? Yeah, that's a wonderful moment to freeze on me, Vista. Thanks a lot.

Oh well, that's nothing that a reboot while muttering under your breath can't take care of. With more serious issues, like trying to connect to another computer via Vista's remote desktop assistance, the customer service reps are pretty useful to chat with on Microsoft's site. Also, their support with Service Pack 1 is free right now, until March 18, 2009. Though I rarely have to use that option, it's nice that it's there. When your operating system includes a search bar built into the start menu, that means it's going to make troubleshooting and file finding easy.

As long as Windows is around, I'll probably be using their OS on my personal computer. As will my children, and my children's children, and my children's children's children.Then they might move to Linux for a year, but that penguin can only hold their gaze for so long before they do a dual install with Windows.