It’s a Good Thing not to have to do this in a crisis mode. The ‘old’ computer is working fine, and will continue to be my backup, but the new one is getting its programs. I opted to skip the ‘bargains’ like Word Office, etc…so it’s a pretty uneducated computer.
I’m an old DOS user—I believe in ‘seeing’ all my files and the whole file name AND path. I like to know the True Name of things, because I don’t guarantee I won’t invoke it. Naturally I have the confidence I won’t blitz a needed file.
What I didn’t expect was duplicate (locked) My Documents, My Music, My Pictures files that simply resisted being unlocked or dealt with. Jane found the answer: Win 7 (Pro) has a set of zombie data files intended to handle ‘legacy’ application that expect those files to be configured a certain way. Unfortunately they will continue to clutter up the landscape, since there is not a ‘user hide-files’ command that I can figure.
And as a note, you can stop a Word Perfect Install and leave it suspended while you install Mozilla Thunderbird…didn’t know if that would work, since MT squealed about it, but it did just fine. WP wants a ‘mail program’ at a certain point in its install and will force you to abort the install if you can’t give it one. Lazy me. I just gave it to it, and it’s happy.
I can’t find my Family Tree Maker 2012 copy. It’s gone walkabout.
I’m going to have to make a list of all my freeware installs. They don’t take MUCH time to install compared to, say, WP, which is a 3-cuppa-coffee install…but…they add up.
It’ll be a while before I’m willing to attempt the Carbonite data move, in which I tell Carbonite cloud storage to dump to the new guy.
The lighted keyboard is real nice, but tricksy. It comes on when you type on it, once you set it up—though you can tell it how long to stay lit, and currently it’s not letting me at those blanks. Great device for someone like me, who uses the keyboard in a dark room while watching Korean movies.
I got OnePass cloned: that’s the program that creates and remembers all the passwords. And I’d forgotten I’d created an application password that had a mistake in it, so the clue didn’t work. That was hairy to reconstitute—you just hope the process works: being what they are, they don’t go shipping passwords to you… If you use that program, which I heartily recommend, you really need to be sure what you did!
I got Photoshop installed. Not that I can use the thing.
The ‘music’ folder is a bit of a waste: I don’t do music. Though I might, if I get my playing up to speed. Might offer some downloads of stuff I’ve written. Or, since it also has a camera, just some little quasi-podcasts if I feel like it. That would require looking good—the reason I decided the Visiphones forecast in the 50’s were just not going to fly…
Anyway, it’s evening activity.
It has a better screen, easier to read; but it’s also a big screen, which means the keyboard has a dedicated number pad, which means the typing keys are slightly offcentered, and on my not-so-good vision side, to boot. But I’ll learn this keyboard; it’s just awkward getting used to it. I have my beloved trackpoint mouse, so I can cope with anything else.
OT: Do you have a schedule on your appearances for soonercon and will you be signing any books?
Of course I will sign books! And I will be at Soonercon from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon, at least. I haven’t gotten my panel schedule yet, but I don’t spend time in my room—I’ll be out and about, in function areas, in the dealers’ room, in the art show, and just hanging about. Just wave me down, say hello—I’m hoping there’s a bar within reach, at least some place to sit down; I’m still on diet Coke due to the diet, and will be, at this rate of losing, for much of the year [sigh] but at least I plan to do some pleasant sitting and talking to people.
Regular softdrinks are 15% or so sugar–look at the label! Just take the can, approximate 1/6th the way up the can with a finger, and ask yerself if’n you want to eat that much C&H. But “diets” don’t have a much better reputation for healthyness! No sugar, but the other effects aren’t good either. Coffee, surprize, does have some health benefits, but tea, especially green tea, is far and away the most healthful common beverage you can drink. 🙂
pssst: Even better than water! 😉
Depending on the tea brand. According to what I read in a news article, and I by no means take it as gospel, Lipton and Bigelow brands green tea had higher concentrates of lead in them, although the article also said that the tea bag material filtered out the lead. Hmmm, must be magical paper..
CJ, when did you switch from LastPass to OnePass? I seem to remember you recommending LastPass a while back, so I’ve been using that. Was there a way you could have used the “File Settings and Transfer” function of Win7 to move stuff to the new computer? I swear, the next desktop I buy is going to have ZERO crap on the main hard drive, just the OS and whatever files I need to have there. Everything else gets stuffed onto a secondary drive, because I do not like having to wait 3 minutes for Win7 to get to the log-in screen. Maybe I have too many peripherals on this PC, though. I have two internal physical hard drives besides the main drive, a DVD-ROM burner, a 500GB MyBook USB external drive, and a 1TB MyBook USB external drive configured as a RAID storage drive. I’ve lost certain functions in this PC over the years (since 2008), such as the internal network interface, a couple of the USB hubs, especially the USB 2.0 hub (grr!), and because I have certain furry pets that like to investigate cables and wires, the very tip of the speaker plug has broken off inside the jack and cannot be extracted. Also, the left speaker wire has been extensively taste-tested by a certain all-black furball who shall remain nameless, lest I invoke the wrath of the gods upon her, and I need to replace that cable, too. I’m just not in the market to start spending on a new PC yet, if this one craps out, I’ve got my laptop, and there isn’t much I really need from this computer that isn’t backed up on the RAID drive. I was thinking of getting just the tower, with the OS loaded (yuck, since they add all sorts of other fluff to it), 8GB of RAM, an excellent video card, and a hard drive that will accommodate Win7 and damned little else is necessary. Bottom line price from Dell – $750, which is what I paid for this computer 5 years ago…..well, at least the price hasn’t gone through the roof. If I were as creative as Xheralt, I’d load Linux instead, but my experience with Linux/UNIX is limited. I suppose XWindows would be the GUI to use, though, I haven’t kept up with that side of computing.
If you are a huge tea drinker (guilty as charged) it’s worth it to buy loose tea from a tea company. I use Upton Tea which is local in Massachusetts but buys from all over the world. http://www.uptontea.com/ A lot of people flinch at the thought of loose tea but there are tea balls, tea filter bags, strainer baskets, to name a few options. Once you drink loose tea you will never go back to tea bags. Hey, I deal in absolutes.
As for me, I am still in love with my MacBook.
Re joekc6nix rgd “the tea bag material filtered out the lead” — I read a similar article and the impression I got was, not that the lead was filtered out, but that it never made it into the tea, but just stayed in the leaf.
Re smartcat rgd “once you drink loose tea you will never go back to tea bags” — actually, I drink both; the convenience of tea bags is a big plus.
For people lucky enough to live near an Asian-American grocery store — that’s the place to go, for both loose-leaf tea and tea bags, especially for green tea (green tea has had more of a continuous presence in Asian tea culture than in the west, where it’s sometimes been black tea only). Also for tea filter bags.
I’m with you on wanting to know where my files are and what they’re called, which is why I’ll have no truck with this “libraries” nonsense that came in with Win7. To my mind, one of the view things Vista did right was to rename the “My Documents” folder to simply “Documents”, and I was annoyed when Win7 switched it back — on the Windows Explorer level but not the DOS level. I’m stubborn enough to change them back — which doesn’t seem to bother anything — and to keep changing them back when, once or twice a year, a Windows Update decides to “fix” them for me.
The zombie folders are annoying, I agree. On my system they’re hidden files, so I could not see them by electing not to see any hidden files, but I don’t care to do that.
I may ‘hide’ the files long enough to let the Carbonite download land and stuff the the proper folders in so I can tell the real My Documents from the zombie twin, but it’s annoying that a user can’t ‘hide’ a specific folder. Maybe there is an option for that. I should look.
I can do that, but I run Linux! 🙂 BWAHAHAHAHA! [gd&r]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATTRIB
Attrib will let you mark files hidden. If they are hidden, they can still be accessed, but they won’t display… Unless you also turn on “show hidden files” in your Windows Explorer settings. In which case, Attrib won’t help you.
You can also select something you want hidden, right-click on it, choose “Properties” then select the Hidden checkbox (and then OK to apply the changes AND close the properties window).
Again, if you have turned on “show hidden files” it won’t do much for you.
The best free file manager I’ve found (as an alternative to My Computer / Windows Explorer) is CubicExplorer. Tabs, and many different options to customize appearance and use. See the screenshots here: http://www.cubicreality.com/ce/
Theer is also a portable version available from PortableApps – so you can keep all your settings when you copy it to another computer.
In general I try to use as many portable applications as possible these days, because it’s painless moving them to a new computer.
Another little program I couldn’t live without is Everything search engine from http://www.voidtools.com/
It’s much better and quicker than the built-in Windows file search.
Thank you, GW! I’m sure more than one of us will find those useful!
Other downloads I’ll be using are, of course, Calibre (ebook format converter and reader), Sigil (ePub file opener, so you can manipulate what’s inside an ePub,) CCleaner (anti malware,) Malwarebytes (anti malware), Filezilla (loads files to web,) Namo WebEditor (HTML editor,)Kindle reader (various), Adobe, Family Tree Maker, Carbonite (cloud file storage)— all of which keep my life in order. I don’t use the CCleaner and Malwarebytes except in case of trouble, but when you need them, they’re useful. I use Norton as a protective program: I’ve tried several others including Avast and AVG, but in this incarnation, Norton seems to be the best. Of these, some are shareware and appreciate a donation: Adobe, Carbonite, Namo, Family Tree Maker, and Norton are paid programs.
New puter sounds nice. I like to see all the files, too, and their whole paths. Interesting about the ‘zombie’ folders, I wonder if they are actual folders or just aliases for the actual folders. I’m guessing the latter, so there’s really only one copy.
I like Classic Shell, an open source replacement for windows explorer that makes it easier to find things, and also lets you configure your start menu more easily than windows.
My can’t-live-without programs include notepad++, a text editor that is vastly superior to notepad, and irfanview, a do-everything graphics program that keeps me from needing photoshop (which I can’t use well either).
I’d like one of those keyboards that lights up, haven’t sprung for one yet. I’ve grown adept at finding the little raised areas on the f and j keys so that I can type in the dark–mostly. I have trouble remembering which symbol is over which number though…
I have a desktop (yes, I know), and got a Logitech lighted keyboard for it that is super thin. It has a full number pad (I used to work for an accountant and had to learn 10-key, which comes in handy now and then). It has a very light touch, which I insist on. (I won’t buy a keyboard unless I can type on it first to see what kind of touch it has.) I have resisted laptops because I don’t like their keyboards. (And I refuse to give up my little mouse!) Here’s the link: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/illuminated-keyboard
The lighted keyboard would be best if it burned all the time, but thus far I can’t trigger that option. I see the buttons, but the checkmark that would make the buttons work ain’t available for some reason I haven’t yet figured.
I had the option for Win 7 Pro on this one, and took it rather than face Win 8…it’s got just a few tricks the non-Pro version didn’t. So I’m occasionally stopping and muttering “Whut—-“
Assuming your usual brand, I may have a similar model, but with the eeevil touchpad–actually, it’s not bad once you figure out it has two ways to do everything and you do NOT want both turned on. IAC, as near as I can discover, the keyboard light behavior is only changeable off/bright/dim. It turns off when it turns off.
OTOH, if you see buttons…where, please? Buttons that are turned off are usually off because you’re not in the admin account, or you’re in the admin account but haven’t told it, “Yes, I understand I could disastrously undermine the stability of my machine by keeping the keyboard light on, but yes, I really, really want to.” Somewhere, a button should enable the locked buttons, if you’re in the admin acc’t.
Anent diet soft drinks, several issues have been raised with them. One is the breakdown products from them (except, I think Splenda, which is just wrong-handed sucrose). Another is, simply accustoming oneself to sweet things: just as you can train yourself down from 4% milk to 0% milk, you can train your tastes to less sweetness. Another issue (Salt Sugar Fat) is that Coke wouldn’t be selling it if it weren’t addictive. “In studies of rats who were exposed to cocaine, then given a choice between intravenous cocaine or oral saccharine, most chose saccharin.”
Tea and coffee are generally seen as beneficial anti-oxidants if they aren’t over-sweetened. I find I can drink ice tea unsweetened.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/artificial-sweeteners-sugar-free-but-at-what-cost-201207165030
except, I think Splenda, which is just wrong-handed sucrose
Stereochemistry is critical to biological use, certainly, but that’s not it. Sucralose is trichlorinated sucrose.
Thank you for the correction!
The question with all these artificial sweetners is always, “Is it safe?”
With the chlorination I can well understand (BS, Chemistry, CSULB, ’67) it doesn’t metabolize. But there’s just something about eating a chlorinated compound that has always made me a bit uneasy. We don’t normally do that–which is why it isn’t metabolizable.
Although I use sacchrin regularly, I think the best advise is similar to what I heard Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gormet, say about margarine. In effect: we thought it was going to be better for us in place of animal fats, but now (hydrogenated trans-fats) it seems we’re better off with animal products we evolved with [emphasis mine], e.g. butter, just used in moderation. As you suggested above along that line, we’re probably better off using real sugar, in strict moderation so our taste doesn’t get jaded. 😉
Re: Artificial Sweetners, Science Daily.
I was taking my occasional tour through Science Daily this morning and found this: “May 29, 2013 — Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a popular artificial sweetener can modify how the body handles sugar.
In a small study, the researchers analyzed the sweetener sucralose (Splenda®) in 17 severely obese people who do not have diabetes and don’t use artificial sweeteners regularly.
‘Our results indicate that this artificial sweetener is not inert — it does have an effect,’ said first author M. Yanina Pepino, PhD, research assistant professor of medicine. ‘And we need to do more studies to determine whether this observation means long-term use could be harmful.’
The study is available online in the journal Diabetes Care.”
More is on the Science Daily site.
M. Y. Pepino, C. D. Tiemann, B. W. Patterson, B. M. Wice, S. Klein. Sucralose Affects Glycemic and Hormonal Responses to an Oral Glucose Load. Diabetes Care, 2013;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130529190728.htm
Thank you again, Paul. I don’t believe I’m in any danger of type 2 diabetes, but I don’t think I’ll be buying any more Splenda.
I’ve been having fantastic results with the 5:2 diet, even with very little Splenda. I did my usual feast Saturday, fast Sunday last weekend. Usually, I just feast Monday and fast Tuesday, just to get it out of the way and so I have time to try again if I miss; but this week Tuesday didn’t work as planned (for the first time), so the fast moved to Wednesday. And I’ve been fasting or near (defined as 600 kcal men; 500, women) since then, under 3000 kcal in four and a half days–arguably 3000 kcal wouldn’t be an unreasonable daily maintenance diet for someone 200-odd pounds. I think this is okay since some fasting regimes call for 200 kcal in four days, I’m hitting protein targets, I feel fine, and hunter-gatherers hardly could schedule their meals.
The only concern is, what happens when I hit my goal of 185? There are good reasons (longevity, neuron creation) to continue the 5:2 diet for life, but I don’t really want to get thinner than 185.
(I’ve been stuck at 210-220 for years if not decades. It’s not, I think, a bad weight for someone of my height, but my doc kept nagging no matter how many times I protest the BMI index, proportional to the square of height, is idiotic for a three dimensional person, not to mention one fighting gravity, which I think gets us to the fourth power of height. BMI works for people of near average height, but I’m three standard deviations beyond average. Sigh: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” — H. L. Mencken [emphasis added])
I hope others saw it as well.
I’m doing the 5&2 also, for a couple months now. So far so good. I usually try Mon&Thu or Tue&Fri for “fasting” days, and although I can’t conveniently get to 600, I can do 700 or thereabouts. My stick-tests had been “stuck”, and now they’re more “responsive”. I think it’s responsible for bring me down from about a 228 average to 220 or so.
I’m a night person, so I don’t even think about eating until about noon. On fast days, I have 1.5 l / 60 oz of tea, either English style with raw sugar and milk (~200 kcal) or herbal with Splenda (~0 kcal). That staves off hunger until late afternoon or early evening when I have (respectively) the very odd shredded BBQ chicken (400 kcal) or one of several 600 kcal entrees, all hitting the protein target and from Trader Joe’s. I’ve also found a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, ~20 kcal, is a good way to stop feeling hungry before sleep.
My personal take on this is, your body is signalling you to hunt/gather. Having something sufficiently tasty convinces it, “Oh, you caught something. Okay: signal off.” Another option is to go for a walk, “Oh, you’re hunting/gathering. I’ll stop distracting you.”
I’m going to try that High Intensity Interval Training once I get down to target weight. I don’t want to change two variables at once, and exercise promotes hunger to replace the kcals burned.
I’ve got Win 8, but with Classic Shell I have it looking like Win 7. I chose 8 because they actually made some improvements under the hood, in particular the task manager, backups, remote desktop, and hyper-V.
I think you are going to get really good at finding the shift key in the dark to make the lights go on!
One of the reasons I remain an Apple fanboy is the way a new Mac says, on first boot: “are you transferring from another computer? is it on this wifi net? Ok, go away while I set everything up for you.” In, particular, did this successfully when the old machine had been pulled off of the table by my son’s cats and had no working screen or keyboard, but could be turned on … Just sayin’.
I might go for a tablet/notebook ifn I could get it without Windows! 🙁 Can you spell “monopoly”, boys and girls? Who remebers the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?
You shoulda gone for a Linux distro on it! It’s way cheaper, AND it will run KVM virtual machines! 🙂 Wanna run DOS, Win95, XP? No problem, even if you want to run ’em simultaneously on the same “box”. You can create a virtual machine, install your OS of choice in it–it’ll think it’s running on a real machine–and when you have to move to a new box, just move the file that makes up the virtual machine and it never knows the difference because the virtual hardware, it thinks is real, is still the same, defined in the file along with it’s allocated virtual hard drive!
I was running virtual machines 30 years ago on smaller, slower mainframes. 🙂 What’s taking so long? 😉
We’re quite out of sorts with our iPad, and if they were passing them out free on the street, I don’t think either of us would cross the street to get one—well, maybe, but not at a run. They’re great for viewing movies in hotels. The slide show balks and is more often an embarrassment than an asset. It updates itself without permission. It runs off iTunes, which, since neither of us uses music, is a bit arcane, and that itself keeps demanding to be updated, it seems every time we actually want to do something with the iPad, like about once every 3 months. It was way pricey and a curious blend of too aggressively independent with never-quite-ready to do what you want.
Linux scares me like a fresh-out-of-the-winter-cave grizzly bear. 😛
There ought to be a song called “New Computer Blues” so we can at least laugh about these tribulations once in a while.
Glad you have a newer machine though, and bigger screen is great too 🙂
I’m a very casual user – the “easier” the interface the better. I can barely handle web addresses some days. File names make my head hurt at times.
I agree with you about some of the freeware/shareware. We used a program called Total Commander for years to avoid having to use Windows Explorer. I tend to run Avast but that’s as much because I’ve never once run Norton without having immediate problems with the kind of uses I want to make of my machine and my connection: Norton is apparently (or was a few years ago) anti-gaming. When you spend as much time in a virtual world as you do in the real one…! (Yes, I admit it, I was a World of Warcraft addict.)
Our solution to backup files is different, though – we have a network-attached storage (which is also attached to its very own battery backup on a separate circuit); the drives within that wonderful little black box gives us nearly two terabytes of space. Handy for all those back episodes of Doctor Who, or whatever.
Modern distros like Ubuntu and it’s derivative Mint are all gooey like Windows. You shouldn’t have any greater problem than you did going between different versions of Windows or it’s apps. (Remember “Clippy”? 🙁 What’dya think of the “ribbon”? 🙁 )
Perhaps the reason you fear it is because it lets you do more things Windows has decided you shouldn’t be allowed to do, take more control–like control hidden directories, take responsibility. And on the other side of Windows there’s a Mac. 😉
Since I work from home and handle data that requires security out the wazoo, I have two separate desktops hooked to a little KVM switch which allows me to control both machines using the same monitor, mouse and keyboard. My work one is a Vista machine, and my “Play” one is Windows 7, to which I have a second monitor (the flat screen monitor off my old Dell desktop, which cratered, and was the reason I bought the windows 7 machine.) I got a little gizmo from Amazon (Only about $50) that turns the video plug into a USB plug so you can hook a second monitor onto any machine, whether it has two video plugs or not. The KVM switch lets me run both computers and change between them on the fly with a hot key. I’ve got a wallpaper program on both machines, but when I’m on the Vista machine, which only has access to the one monitor, the other monitor runs a slide show from my wallpaper program. Unfortunately, the KVM switch won’t allow you to use wireless keyboards or mice. I like having the two monitors. When I write, I have my WP program on the right-hand screen, and can use the lefthand screen for reference, searches, or any other program I need to keep open, and don’t have to juggle between programs.
My KVM switch allows wireless – I’m using a wireless keyboard right now. (It’s a new KVM switch, since the old one was for PS/2 keyboard and mouse.)
OOOOOH — post links!
Belkin, from my local big-box office-supply place (not the one at the link, but it’s the same switch).
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/401007/Belkin-Flip-2-Port-KVM-Switch/
The old one still works, but no can find PS/2 keyboards.
Your KVM switch is almost exactly like mine. Do you plug the wireless dohicky that would plug into a USB port into the KVM switch instead?
It has USB ports for the mouse and the keyboard, and you plug the little doohickey into the appropriate slot. No problems so far (except the usual one of tipping the keyboard plank off the desktop).
So glad to find out what those “My Documents” etc. folders are that W7 won’t let me in to!! I’ve wondered about it but not enough to research it. If I am messing about in Explorer I’ve learned which icon to click on to get into my files – at least the ones I keep in “My Documents”, which does not include any important data on the work laptop. Most of the info on that machine is in a directory named “Data” and sub-directories under that. That’s how I was taught it should be back in the ’90s, and I still organize my machines that way.
I like Dell’s lighted keyboards better than the one on my ASUS – the Dell lights up right away, but the ASUS won’t light up until after Windows boots, which is after I had to enter my password. Annoying, which is one of the reasons the ASUS is now sitting on the dining table running SETI while I’m typing this on my ultrabook.
I find the W7 libraries very handy; they can be an easy shortcut to a directory I use often, or group directories of related files that aren’t together in the file tree.
ITunes has been uninstalled from every computer I own – my DH has an IPad, so he still uses it, but I banished it from my machines.
Writing this on the new computer…which at first denied it could get a driver for the printer—yesterday. Tonight, apparently it rummaged the housenet far enough it announced it had found a printer and a driver via our ‘hub’ computer and did I trust it? I opined, yes, Hal, I trust it. Open the pod bay doors, Hal, and USE the thing!
I now have a printer. Having written a story about an uppity robot named Anne, I do have to wonder what else it’s been reading…
@joekc6nlx: That’s the sort of thing that is probably causing your slow boot-up times. You’ve got a lot of stuff in/on your box! First the BIOS, then Windows, have to query/explore all the hardware you’ve got attached/plugged into your box, especially the USB stuff. Anything on USB is hot-plugable and is presumed to have disappeared or switched sockets when the machine is off, so it doesn’t keep any configuration information about them. “Who’s out there? And don’t all answer at once!” And if you’ve got a LAN, the same sort of thing goes on, especially if you run DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)as most do.
So the new computer is named ‘Hal’? That could be problematic.
Lol—no, it’s not ‘Hal.’
Bomb #20?
OT: I hope your friends and relatives in OK didn’t get flooded or blown away.
I mean LastPass, of course. Foggy me.
To reduce startup time, an important thing is to check is what applications are running automatically at startup. There may be many things that you don’t need and never use, but which are slowing your computer considerably.
There are a number of free startup utilities around. NirSoft has a good one, WhatInStartup.
For a really comprehensive look at what’s starting up on your machine (for advanced users) there is Microsoft Autoruns.
Thanks. I needed that.
So! It’s June. “Birthday Tux” is appropriate.
Do we have a June b’day?
As I like to put it, “I was going to be born on the eve of a memorable event, D-Day, the Normandy Beach Party, but the Channel was atrocious. Ike could wait a day, I couldn’t.”