I proudly, o SO proudly, purchased my refurbished and most beloved Dell laptop three years ago and have, like a benevolent and beaming mommy, been through battery, charger and memory chip (due to overheating of the battery because of the charger) crises and survived them one and all. I have not only survived with my Dellie in fact, my adoration has increased over the years. Imagine my horror therefore, when it began it's flagging and gasping a weak ago. I pressed my fingertips to it's fevered battery location, it ran a temp, I placed my ear to it's innards, it hummed just a little too loudly. All in all, Dellie was indicating that he/she was once again ailing (we call vehicles and boats she - what do we call PC's?). I begged, I pleaded, I scolded, I nagged ......for a week ..... my pleas fell on the selectively deaf ears of my husband and Dellie hung more and more and for longer and longer and the reboots became more and more frequent.
Finally, in a moment of pique on Thursday last, I hovered anxiously yet slightly irkedly over him/her as he/she sluggishly rebooted FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME and drank a glass of water to soothe my tortured soul (one would not want to eat and put weight on ON TOP of one's angst about the failing Dellie). As the internet connection FINALLY came "alive" and I flung myself into my chair to send some mail, I actually, despite YEARS of care, knocked my glass of water onto the keyboard and Dellie DIED - and I mean INSTANTLY! I phoned my bored engineer husband, I googled wildly on his laptop, I dug through all of our books -I desperately sought advice on how to resurrect.
Turn it upside down and fan it was the main line I discovered and that is precisely what I did. Dellie lay in state on the dining room table,upon the best and fluffiest towel in the house, being fanned gently like an Egyptian pharaoh for the 48 hours all sources had indicated was obligatory if even the slightest hope of resuscitation was to be held. Of course, I fretted over the dearth of work being done and the amount of e-mail that was probably building up but I knew that I had to do whatever it took to bring dear Dellie back to life.
It all worked!! Dellie was reborn, just as slow, just as hot and, just as overworked and hangy as ever. I sighed, I clutched myself and eventually, after an absolutely ENORMOUS nag, prevailed upon my husband to dig out his old desktop (old as in not as speed of light fast as his current one) and put it together for me. My teen wailed and wept of course as she had been in possession of it before and it had been removed until her disgusting grades improved -which hasn't happened as yet of course hence the availability.
We set it up, we plugged it all in, I began to move things onto my removable hard drive and became deeply concerned about transferring my e-mails which were in excess of 3 gigs of data which the transfer wizard couldn't handle. We finally bought some special transferral software and received the activation code on Monday morning whereupon I rushed to complete the transfer. I finalised it all by moving my Foxmarks and Outlook settings over and lo and behold, a new child was born.
What can I say? Years of unfaltering loyalty, of devotion, of doing WHATEVER it took to keep Dellie alive and now, I have speed, no hanging, so much productivity that I literally blaze a trail of light as I work. What I wondered, possessed me to cling so fiercly to that laptop that had been slowing speedy me down to slug pace? I suspect it has been about the known and fear of the unknown - the usual reason to be clingy.
The lesson or moral of the story? Blind loyalty is always .... Always..... ALWAYS stupid because it prevents one from even trying out the new often. I am downloading e-mails in a tenth of the time. I am able to run 20 apps at once. I can sit on more than one website at a time and last but not least, I have 250 gigs to play with instead of 40 with a buggy removable hard drive extension. I sincerely hope I've learnt my lesson and won't be so hopelessly devoted next time!
Last but not least, the disgustingly graded teen sits with the paint dryingly slow Dellie - a fit punishment to be sure!
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