Our computers, let me show you them.

[avevale_intelligencer]

We have quite a lot.

My main desktop was bought new from Mesh at the beginning of the Time When We Had Money. Pentium 4, 2 gig memory, 250gig internal hard drive, DVD-ROM and DVD-RW drives, Windows XP. I do web surfing, word processing, art and games on it, and it does what I want it to do, mostly. My main worry with it is that ever since I had that scare about the CMOS battery it's been continually on except for restarts and crashes, because I still haven't had the nerve to take the back off and change the thing. (Why something so essential should be so hard to reach I don't know.)

I have a laptop I use for music. It's secondhand, bought about the same time, and is a Pentium 4 with 2 gig memory and a DVD-RW drive, and with two external hard drives and an external audio interface it does what I want it to do....mostly. Except that I have several VSTs (again, acquired in the Year Of Living Dangerously) that won't actually work on it, and if I try and layer too many instruments it gets crackly on me and I really want to know that it will never do that in the middle of a performance. I don't currently know that.

Jan's main machine is inherited from Alan and Carole, and is a Heinz 57. It's lower spec than mine, and she only uses it for the web and writing though she'd love to do art on it if she could find a user-friendly piece of software. Again, it's on the whole time, because it started out with a monitor that used to take twenty minutes to decide whether it wanted to work, and Jan has technofear just like me.

We also have another laptop, again bought secondhand, supposedly for Jan to use, but it's too big and heavy for her to take anywhere and it refuses to connect to our theoretical network. Yes, we have a theoretical network, and it enables three out of four machines to see the Web, but not to share files or printers. Did for a while, then stopped and after much tinkering with firewalls and wizards I still don't know why or how to fix it.

Yes, we have a lot more computers than many people do, and more of them work than not, so we're blessed in many ways, and I really shouldn't have this terrible overwhelming urge to upgrade at least three of them to something closer to the heart's desire. I really shouldn't.

Comments

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

Hokay
-- one 2010 desktop which works all apart from one driver (and it won't tell me which one) and connects to the Web via wireless router; runs EVE & hi-end games & web
-- one ?2007? desktop which works slowly and has a start-up file it can't comprehend and connects via the same router; runs Eve slowly, and lower-end games if it can bear to laod/run them; main wp machine
-- one 2009 laptop which runs Vista and conects to the Web via the router; acts as Beloved's game machine, also back-up wp machine & iplayer
-- one 2010 web-book which runs whichever windows is abotu the be made obsolete; can connect to the web via the router (or hot spots); used a small size web browser
-- one 2004/5 desktop which failed 3 years ago, and has mostly been drained. Being kept becasue it runs Old Windows, and therrefore would run the old games I have. Waiting to be revived (my restore disks won't) and put back into service (althougbn Beloved fondly thinks it's for the junk-heap)

And no integrated network because the book I bought on wireless networks doesn't seem to work, and Dave of Biggleswade says not to wireless them (?)

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Not to wireless them? That sounds very unlike Dave, he usually likes to network everything that can be networked, including the TV and for all I know, the fridge.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

But does he do wireless or proper wired networks? I use WiFi at my lodgings, because that's all that's supplied, and occasionally with the netbook in hotels and other places, but at home I have everything wired (well, not quite everything, I still haven't found a reasonable option to wire mains switching of appliances into the network). I don't have nor do I want a WiFi router on the system.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

He does both. My own "work" PC is wired to the router, as is his, the fileserver, and a printer or two. I'm not sure if the stereo is wired or wireless, but the laptops and netbook are usually on WIFI (though also have a system for connection to the network via any free mains socket if we need extra speed).

I know at one point I was sitting in the dining room playing music from the hard disc of my laptop - via the big stereo in the lounge, which was reading from the laptop across the network. Handy way of improving the speakers :)

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

Belldandy - iMac G5 with an external hard drive running Time Machine and also linked to

Skuld - the were_gopher's Intel quad-core gaming machine. Built to run Fallout Vegas and do serious video work in its spare time; currently stuck on Bejeweled.

Urd - last of my home-builds, low-end AMD for old school gaming and kids' games. Won't be replaced when it goes; I dream of reincarnating Bell-chan as an Intel Mac and installing Parallels.

Keiichi - semi-portable laptop currently in the library helping us catalogue (3,500 entries on Librarything and counting).

Megumi - Mac Mini G4 currently on the shelf, earmarked to become a home server this year if I can afford to do the surgery on it.

Beppo - eeePC netBook possibly going to the were_gopher's Mum as she's currently homebound.

All connected via the Yggdrasil Home Network (do we detect a theme here?) which we had put into the house when the mains needed re-doing - Cat5e is faster and slightly more secure than wi-fi.