In February 2009 I wrote a post entitled “Preserving the record” in which I queried the reliability of digital media for long-term storage. The following is a comment from one of my readers at the time, followed by my reply:
In February 2009 I wrote a post entitled “Preserving the record” in which I queried the reliability of digital media for long-term storage. The following is a comment from one of my readers at the time, followed by my reply:
At last the old laptop has all but expired after nearly five years and I cannot complain. It has been heavily used, almost daily, giving me hundreds of hours of access to news and other information, plus the great pleasure of watching and hearing my musical heroes and heroines past and present thanks to YouTube. How many hours per week I have “played” with the laptop I would not care to admit but for well under £2 per week I reckon the computer was brilliant value for money.
Last week I bought a new machine (an Acer Aspire V5 Touch), which promoted me instantly from a user of the Windows Vista 32 bit operating system to the latest version of Windows 8, 64 bit. The change to Windows 8 has been much easier than I was expecting though I have a lot to learn yet before I can claim to be fluent at navigating the system. Despite substantially more RAM and storage memory than my old computer, this new machine is nowhere near as quick as I was expecting, though it does handle large quantities of data with considerable aplomb and a complete absence of hiccups. It is also very quiet and runs remarkably cool. I have now emptied 150GB of files from my desktop hard drive into the Acer, together with most of the files on my old laptop (another 120GB), and sorted and condensed all of this down to about 100GB of files which now reside in both the Acer and the independent hard drive, ie. all my digital files going back several years in one computer plus a complete and easily accessible back-up with lots of space to spare all round.
The old laptop hasn’t finished yet. Some time ago, when it was becoming slow and frequently freezing in the middle of a task, I emptied it and reinstalled from scratch. It took hours and was not fun but it did improve the performance considerably. Now, a couple of years on, I cannot face the idea of repeating that procedure, especially as Vista is getting a bit old and some updating seems to be a good idea. However, while the old laptop seems no longer able to handle large files, or bunches of small ones, it still plays music and MIDI files and video files (via Audacity, Notation Composer and Real Player) and has no problems with everyday office functions (Word and Excel). So I propose to keep it for those functions while it remains able, permanently linked to the printer and external speakers but disconnected from the Internet. Future downloads for this computer will be filtered through the new laptop and the comprehensive anti-virus (etc.) software installed there.
It has been a pleasant surprise to discover that moving from Vista 32bit to Windows 8, 64 bit has not required vast expense on new software to support all my interests. My main worry concerned Adobe Photoshop. This cost a small fortune when I purchased version 5.5 in the 1990s and have been using ever since. The modern version is simply unaffordable so far as I am concerned and I was expecting to change to the very similar (the last time I looked) free Open Source software called GIMP. If I remember correctly I first used Photoshop 5.5. at least 15 years ago in conjunction with Windows 3.1. It has never been updated yet it works with Windows 8.
Some other packages were simply loaded into the new laptop from the old CDs and worked perfectly. I discovered that my genealogy programme, Personal Ancestral File, has been discontinued since I last used it so I downloaded the free version of Ancestral Quest , a straightforward replacement. To replace other software with which I am familiar I downloaded free versions (which will be upgraded now that I know they work) or at least reconnected on the Internet. These included Realplayer, Audacity, Evernote and others. I had to buy a new version of Microsoft Office. Given the price of the computer I had hoped that it would be included. No such luck.
I cannot remember now when I started this blog. Come to think of it, I can’t remember very much at all these days but I think it was about five years ago. I don’t pay much attention to the blog’s “stats” but I looked at them today and was amazed to see that there have been over 75,000 views, almost 250 posts and well over 600 comments (excluding mine). The most popular topics have been my Raleigh Oakland and Raleigh (Ikea) folding bicycles – which is odd, since I have neither cycled nor blogged about cycling for at least a couple of years. Indeed, in the hope of preserving the hips as long as I can (they are quite able to complain these days before I have walked a couple of miles) I am unlikely to cycle again. I will try to remember to sell those bikes (both of them almost “as new”) in the spring.
On a personal level 2012 has been a good year. I started the year in the middle of treatment for prostate cancer, with inconvenient side effects already well established and with lots of injections and radiotherapy yet to come. The year ended with the cancer well and truly subdued if not totally defeated. The injections are down to one every three months and my case is reviewed every six months. This will continue for 2-3 years, perhaps longer, and so will the side effects. I am not complaining. If tempted to do so I have only to think of the many lovely family members and friends who didn’t make it to my age, or even to within 10 or 20 years of it.
Several other good things happened to us this year of which by far the best was when our brilliant daughter and son-in-law gave us a beautiful granddaughter, to join our two grandsons. We are so lucky!
I am grateful for all the interest that has been shown in this blog and especially to those who have left comments and whose blogs appear in my blogroll. I wish you a Happy Christmas and may all your own wishes for 2013 come true.
First, I wish you a Happy New Year. I would have done this about 100 hours earlier but my laptop was not cooperating.
I forget now exactly how the trouble started but by Christmas the laptop was becoming intolerably slow and unpredictable. For months I have been toying with the idea of a new computer in early 2012 but I simply don’t think that they are worth the hassle and the money. Why should I pay for a computer that, unavoidably, comes complete with a load of software that I don’t want? Take that software out, reduce the price accordingly and sell me a machine with a decent operating system and I will be happy. On second thoughts I won’t be entirely happy because, after just four years, I shouldn’t feel the need for a new machine at all.
As an alternative to a new laptop I have also been considering the feasability and likely effectiveness of clearing out the contents of the present one and starting again from scratch. By New Year I was sufficiently exasperated to give this a try and so, having copied my own files to a separate hard drive, I loaded the “Product Recovery Disc” (which came with the computer) and followed the on-screen instructions. It took most of an evening and I couldn’t begin to describe what was happening but I was left with a computer plus operating system and very little else. My spare time over the following day or two was spent reinstalling my favourite software packages. The result of all this is a noticeably quicker computer with around 24GB extra free space on the hard drive and all but one of the original problems eliminated.
However, this so-called “Product Recovery Disc” has not entirely lived up to its grand title. There are two new problems, and a couple of mysterious pop-up messages that I have never seen before. The problem that has not gone away is that it it necessary only to hover over a link briefly to activate it, whereas activation should require a definite button click. I can find nothing in the Control Panel to change this. The new problems are that the touchpad lights up unexpectedly – I don’t remember the last time it did this and had forgotten that it was able to do so – and I seem to have lost all references to Bluetooth from the laptop (and that was definitely in the Control Panel prior to the “Recovery”). Apart from the loss of Bluetooth (which I was about to start using to connect the laptop to another gadget – about which I will tell you another time) everything seems to be working.
The mystery messages? One refers to a failure to make a Windows connection – which I cannot describe further as I don’t understand it. The second message (which has appeared a couple of times at the bottom right of the Desktop tells me that this is not a genuine version of Windows! How come? The original was bought pre-installed in the new laptop. Clearly, the new messages must have something to do with the “Product Recovery Disc”. I am beginning to detect the odour of a rodent!
I have intended to review the blogroll here for some time and have now made three worthwhile additions to the Art and Music category. Bill Mather and Daniel Gerhartz are two of my favourite painters of portraits and the husband and wife team, Melanie and Nick Beale, are truly amazing painters of dogs, cats and horses. Enjoy.
I seem to have survived using computers for almost 30 years with relatively little of the essential knowledge of the wretched devices or of the software that supposedly makes them useful. There are many (probably elementary) aspects of computers and computing that I should understand by now but don’t. For example; my laptop’s 150 GB hard drive appears to be divided into two, “Vista (C:)”, in which there are 23.1 GB of free space out of a total of 74.5 GB, and “Data (E:)” with 67.9 GB free space out of 73 GB total. My questions are, can some of that free space from drive “E” be transferred to drive “C”? What effect would this have on the computer’s performance and, if desirable, how to do it?
All comments packed with advice (or sympathy) will be gratefully received!
In reply to the comment from Philip Baillie following my earlier post about Cardiff Bloggers, it would not be appropriate for me to pronounce on the “best” of the Cardiff-based blogs that I have discovered so far – whatever “best” might mean. I have linked to those that seemed the most interesting, to me anyway, when I discovered them back in September and I have found more since then.
I remain interested in finding blogs, produced (mainly) by private individuals based in and around Cardiff, rather than by commercial concerns, and preferably avoiding football, rugby and pop music obsessives! The idea is to help create an ever-widening network of local bloggers of all ages with a great variety of interests.
My earlier “Cardiff Bloggers” post was easily found via Google, or via the WordPress.com search engine, yet no other Cardiff-based blogger has contacted me so far. Therefore it seems unlikely that any other individual or group shares my interest in assembling a local network.
In this Capital City of Wales there must be more than a couple of dozen non-commercial bloggers in a population which is well in excess of 300,000.
From time to time I delete a few links from this blog and insert new ones. Neither additions nor deletions are necessarily permanent. The idea is to limit the total number of links while still guiding my visitors to “new” blogs and websites that have caught my attention for one reason or another, if only temporarily.
I have been shuffling the links again recently and have added the following:
Karin Wells Studio – interesting content and not all of it art and painting.
Carolee S. Clark – a painter with an attractive style.
Twitter – needs no introduction.
Nick Robinson’s Newslog – a good source of commentary on UK politics.
The Cycling Lawyer – for expert commentary on the legal issues relevant to cyclists.
Cycle Social – a site with a difference for cyclists of all kinds, sporting, road, commuting, leisure, slow, whatever. The site is relatively new but growing steadily and looking forward to a relaunch early in the New Year. It has enormous potential for cyclists and local clubs who have the inagination and initiative to use it. I signed up (free) and put myself on the “Members Map” and look forward to meeting (and cycling with) other local members.
Reading the Town Mouse blog today reminded me of my own, usually impatient, efforts to clean my laptop keyboard. Once, approaching the task with enthusiasm and a brand new yellow duster, I managed to remove half-a-dozen keys at a stroke. I never discovered a way to refit them but fitting a replacement keyboard was easy.
My present problem is much more irritating because this laptop is less than two years old and the problem started several months ago (but outside the guarantee period, naturally). Quite why T I O L and N should have been the first to wear away I don’t know but wouldn’t you think they could make a keyboard that didn’t do this? I never saw this problem after many years of use on any of the typewriters that I owned, and they all got far more pounding than any computer keyboard.
“I have been a reluctant computer user of one sort or another since about 1979, but always made to feel an ignorant technophobe.(despite publicising them, writing copy and articles about them – even being employed by Microsoft to write erudite garbage for them).
“It is still the case on a daily basis and I have only just realised why.
“Computers,and other digital stuff, obviously are good/useful etc.
“The whole problem is they are being utterly misused in just about every way imaginable.
“One of the principal reasons is that the software industry has always been dominated by very young, mostly spotty faced inadequates who have traditionally produced all the stuff that makes computers work.
“Unfortunately, hardly anyone other than the programmers understood what the software was and how it worked because every detail of it was originated in the minds of these juvenile delinquents whose immaturity and lack of understanding of the wider World left them without a clue as to how to use things like ‘graphic design’ principles and just plain ‘common sense’ to make things readable and understandable etc.
“Also, it takes my breath away to still see software on a daily basis that I am expected to use, but which usually has either no explanation, very little or is totally incomprehensible due to the inarticulate incapacity of the originators to be able use even the most rudimentary communication skills to explain anything about it to anyone else.
“I went through a period of about 15 years of sharing my London house with three or four young lodgers at a time, many of whom were these very programmers.
“I saw at first hand how incredibly dim and silly they were and how they inevitably inflicted their endlessly juvenile thinking on others through their infantile software production.
“It is still the case that the whole computing World is dominated by people like this and riddled with infantile stupidity. It’s that simple.
“That is the problem.
“We all have to use computing by using the childish and infantile rubbish that immature people thrust down our unwilling throats.”
“Wow! And I thought that I could turn on the heat when peeved about something! Now I can see that I am but an amateur. On the other hand I am sure that you have a point, though it would be too much of a generalisation to apply your remarks to ALL software designers and the companies that employ them. I feel a new post coming on!”
Recently I discovered that my desktop hard drive, bought a few years ago to be an independent method of long-term storage for files and pictures, cannot be accessed by my new Windows 10 laptop. So far, no-one has been able to explain why except to make vague references to “disc formats” – which is not really good enough is it?