I will never write about my computer again

I think I will have to write this a thousand times.   Earlier this morning I was worrying about the back up program not working and guess what happened this afternoon - all the media card readers stopped working.   Reboot didn't fix this so it was back to Dell.  After another 25 minutes on the phone to Dell we sorted the problem.   Those who the Gods want to punish they first let them buy a Dell!

At least it is all working okay again - for now!

Should I write this?

As I write this there is a little voice in the back of my head SCREAMING - 'Don't Do It!'  Well I'm going to do it anyway.  I think I have fixed the backup problem that I had.  The reason why I have this voice is that I don't understand why the program worked before without the fix had to create.  Well time will tell whether this is misplaced confidence.

One of the reasons why I feel confident that I fixed the problem was when I was testing the program this is one of the photographs that backed up without me knowing.   Having just reread that I am not sure that is a very good reason to feel confident.

The rebuild has started

Well here we go again. It doesn't seem like four months have passed since I rebuilt my system but it is. Anyway progress to date. I have installed Adobe Lightroom and the previous catalogue appears to be working - this is a real relief. I have uploaded the current years image files, only 60GB and am now starting on last years - 160 GB. The only hitch, and it really isn't a big one, is that I downloaded the beta version of Safari - not a good idea - and I have had to delete this and will reinstall the latest offical version.

So sofar so good. I am going out to test my new camera and hopefully when I come back I will have another year's image files uploaded.

Its done

Well Dell have completed the reinstall - it only took just under 28 hours!   That, of course, is unfair the actual work tonight took just over two hours.  Now I have the task of rebuilding the computer to the way I want it to be.  This will take a few days so wish me luck.

Computer update

At the moment all is going well.  They are downloading a 105 mb driver for the video card so I haven't got to do anything.  I must say remote assist is a wonderful thing and I enjoy watching the technician work.   At least my blood pressure is a lot lower tonight than it was last night.

so far so good

Well I have started to reinstall the operating system - so far so good.  I have made sure that I install the correct OS this time, my wife is looking over my shoulder this time!   Now I have to wait for the OS to install then the Dell people will ring back and help with the next part of the install, the drivers.  This is where it all went wrong last night.  Watch this space.

Waiting for Godo

I have never been that good at waiting - I always find it irritating but I am having to wait for the Dell person to ring me back - as he said he would.  Well it is nearly two hours after he said he would call back and nothing.   So what do I do?   Call Dell?   Well at this time it is usually very busy so I would be sitting for 20 + minutes listening to some inane musac or wait for the phone call.   I think I am going to have to suck it up and just wait for the call.   This is really starting to annoy me. 

AARRGGHH!!!!!!!!

Ian if you ever read this you can take that smug look off your face.   My computer has gone wrong again.  yesterday I mentioned that we had an electrical storm right over head and this caused some problems with my network.  Well today my computer finally stopped recognising the external card reader leaving me with no way of uploading files that had been captured by my camera.   I had put this off for too long - I contacted Dell.   That is 5 hours I would not wish on my worst enemy.    The long and short of it is that I now have a none functioning computer.

The problem was diagnosed a software conflict and so I was instructed that I would have to reinstall the operating system.   This mean I would have to rebuild the computer as though it was a brand new computer - a problem but not a fatal one.    So I followed the instruction given to me on the phone and reinstalled the operating system.   We then tried to install the drivers and the whole process fell to pieces.  I couldn't get the drivers to work.   I downloaded the drivers from the internet - still didn't work.  I then started to ask for an engineer to attend and sort the problem out - this was not possible as my warranty didn't cover this.   However, I kept insisting on this - so the technician on the phone had to go and talk to his supervisor.   Another hour wait for the supervisor to ring back.   I went through this again and we tried to install the drivers again.   I then found out that I had installed the wrong operating system on the computer, my wife has a 32 bit Vista laptop and my desktop is 64 bit - no wonder the drivers didn't work.   It was not 10 at night and I had had enough.   We will pick this story up in the morning.

So what have I learnt from this episode?   Well first that even premium support from Dell means dealing with the dreaded Indian call centres.   This is nothing against the people who are usually very helpful and obliging but, and this is a big, huge massive BUT, they don't speak english english and no matter how many lessons they go through this will never change.   I have nothing but respect for their technical prowess they just cannot communicate well down the phone.   This is not the people's fault it is the fault of Dell.   They have cut corners on support by out sourcing to India.   telephone communication is a pure verbal communication with no non verbal communication involved and so the message has to be very clear.   When either party doesn't understand exactly what is being said then this is an accident waiting to happen.  Tonight one happened.  I made a mistake, however the person on the phone was not bale to overcome this because he couldn't check which disk I was putting into the machine.   However, his instructions were not clear, especially when things went wrong.   The only moral I would learn from this whole sorry story is to buy a really good support package, one that sends an engineer on site to sort your problems out.   Tomorrow I hopefully will address this deficiency.   However, there will no doubt be more twists and turns in this story.  Oh happy days.

Starting the set up

Just started the set up of my new computer.  This is acting as a test to see if the blog works...which it should

Oops forgot the Dell has arrived.

Almost frgot my new computer has arrived this morning.  I will set this up over the next few days - I have a number of items to connect i.e. printers scanners Wacom tablets etc and there is no rush.   Still I feel a certain amount of trepidation about the whole process.   Wish me luck.

The box has moved

Today is the day.  The box has moved and we will install the printer.   Wish me luck

The box

It just sits there in the dining room.   Its portent mensing all who pass.   The box will not be ignored.   But why is the box sitting there?   It's all to do with the DMU I'm afraid ( well I would say that wouldn't I.)   To tell the story of the box is to tell the story of my son's master's course at the DMU.   Yes we are a family of two master's students at the same university.   Not sure how unique that is but there it is.

The other day my son announced that he wished to print off a 500 page govt. report that he need for his latest assignment and how much would that cost?   Once I had come down off the ceiling he started to realise that perhaps printing the whole document off was, perhaps, a rather expensive way of going about things and that he would probably find other ways of finding the information in the report.   This, however, made me start to assess our printing needs over the next 2 years.   He has essays to write and so do I.  His, however, can be submitted in electronic form, mine can't.   To obtain his MSc he will have to write a 15k word paper which will not be electronically submitted.  I will have to write a 10k word thesis.   My wife also wishes to use the same printer at the same time.  In short time has come to...well get a box.

The box, of course, contains our new colour laser printer and tomorrow I will have the pleasure of installing it on our network.  The salesman who sold me the printer said that it would be straightforward  to setup, which of course is short hand for not straight forward at all.   We hope that the printer should be far more cost effective than the current small inkjet printer.   This will not stop tomorrow from being a real pain.  I hope I am wrong but I have been here before and setting up anything on a network is always fully of unforeseen pitfalls.

Entering the Lions den - should I convert to a MAC?

This really is one of those areas that you tread with trepidation - the Mac's v PC battle.   Both sides have powerful arguments to convince a customer to buy their product.  This of course is a misnomer as there no such thing as a PC side in the same way as there is a Mac side.  Only Apple makes Macs whilst virtually anyone can make a PC.   These are both the strengths and weakness of each product.   Because the Mac is essentially a closed system, i.e. only Apple built products running Apple operating system they tend to be far better coordinated and far less liable to vagaries of the PC world's wonderful driver set up.   To an extent this is now becoming less of a problem but it is still there.   This being said the Macs are more expensive to buy and the software tends to be more restricted and at times slightly more expensive.

So both sides have their pros and cons which leads me to why I am writing this.   I am in the process of replacing my PC.   It is starting to show its age and I am now demanding more and more of it as I deal with larger and larger digital images.  I have put some fixes in to help prolong my system but it is no longer cost effective to carry on this piecemeal  approach.   I am going to replace my PC.   So the question is do I replace my PC with another PC or a Mac.  I asked a colleague from the course his views about using Mac's and I think it is safe to say he is a very keen Mac user.  For him a Mac ticks all the boxes and this certainly gave me some food for thought.   However, having reflected on what was said and then my position I cannot see any sense moving to a Mac.   This does not mean that PC's are better than Macs but rather given my circumstances it is not a cost effective way forward.   The arguments behind this are twofold:

Hardware Costs:  Put simply the cost of a Mac is not competitive with a similar PC (You can say this this now even more so as the many parts within a Mac are the same as a PC.   I know that this is not the totally equation as to why Mac's are more expensive but it is a good place to start.)

Opportunity Costs:  (By this I mean the amount of time I would save and therefore give me the opportunity to do something else than tinker with a computer)  are greater with a Mac than PC.   Let me expand on this a little.   I have been using a DOS based operating system for over 20 years.   I therefore have a significant knowledge base of how PCs work.   This means I understand their little ways a lot better than I do a Mac.  I will give you one small example.   Right Click.   Now this has been a feature with PCs for years and has only more recently become a feature with the Mac.   This means that Mac users tend to use the keyboard and mouse together compared to the PC users, i.e. me.   This is but one example of how the small things make a whole lot of difference.   To a Mac user this is not an issue. To me it is.   This is the problem.  I would have to learn new skills.   These are only small points compared to the system integration that I would have to undertake.   I have written several bespoke programs for myself.  they are vital to the way I work and the thought of having to rewrite these is not worth contemplating.

So having given the matter some thought I cannot see the financial advantage of using a Mac compared to a PC.  This doesn't mean that Macs are bad and PCs are good it just means that for me the cost of moving to a Mac is just too high.

Let the sky fall in on my head.

On final thought.   The browser I use most of the time is Safari.  I think it looks great and most of time works fine.   However, there are times when a web site doesn't work with Safari.  When this happens guess which browser I use.   Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE).   It is perhaps not as beautiful as Safari but always works.   The reason for this is really quite simple.  When you are developing a web site you have to optimize them for different browsers and guess which one is the default - IE.  This doesn't mean I like this it is just a fact of life and I am not that bothered about computers to do anything about it.

Few that felt better!

One final final thought.  I love the ways Mac look, I think they are beautifully designed - almost a work of art.