Close to Nowhere

I don’t know what I’m going to do — my motherboard is dying. Dr. Samuel (my computer geek Robert) has pronounced it very sick and advised that I get another one.

But, you can’t just replace a motherboard. Robert has added network adapters and other stuff that I can’t remember to the plug-ins, but most motherboards nowadays have all their “stuff” built into them, so you can’t just replace the motherboard. All the gadgets, etc. have to come with it.

Apparently, it’s a pain to fool with and the price is about the same as a new computer tower. So in today’s made-to- throw-away-instead-of-fix society, we’re going to throw my entire computer box away.

Built-in obsolescence — whatever happened to built-to-last?

This is the third trip Robert has made to doctor on my computer. He tried two or three different network cards and the motherboard just won’t accept them. I guess it’s tired, it’s around 8-10 years old.

It was really spiffy when I first got it. Big memory for the ram and 1.2 terabytes for hard drive. My favorite thing on my computer though is Windows 7. First, let me say I am not a PC person. We use McIntoshes here at work and I love my Mac. And it loves me. Windows of any letter or number hates me. I tried fooling with Windows 10 on a tablet I had and I hated it almost as bad as it hated me.

I gave that tablet to my granddaughter and now have a tablet with an Android operating system. I’m not crazy about it, but at least I can work on it without screaming.

The first computer we had used 64 K for the ram and 564 K for the hard drive. And it was expensive, even in the mid-1980s. My phone now is a whole lot faster and has considerably more memory than that computer.

To buy that first computer we had to get in the car and drive to a computer store. You can still buy a computer that way, but the last two I’ve had have been ordered off the Internet.

One of the main, broken things on my computer is the network adapter. All I know about that is I can’t get online to the Internet to order a new computer with a broken network adapter.

Oh, wait. Yes I can. My phone gets on the Internet nicely, as does my tablet.

There is a problem with that idea though.

I’m an old lady and need big print to read about what all I’m buying. My phone won’t do big print. Sigh...