New computer

Well, that didn't last long. Wednesday morning I went to go on my computer, and the exact same thing happened...it would not come on. Ugh, totally frustrated...I gave up. A trip to Best Buy resulted and a new computer was purchased. It's something new to me...not a laptop, but not a typical computer either. It's something called and All-In-One, meaning it has a separate screen and keyboard, but instead of having a tower, all the parts that make it run are on the back of the monitor.

It's going to take some time to get used to. For one, it's huge. The screen is 21 and a half inches from corner to corner, a full five inches larger than my previous lap top. From top to bottom is 10 and a half inches, which is a huge difference! I need to get used to the new size.

It runs Windows 10, which I have heard nothing good about. But, it's not as bad as I expected. I did have to "reinvent the wheel" a little bit in how I do things, but that's not too horrible. It's certainly easy enough that I figured it out in a matter of moments, only.

I've already downloaded PhotoScape, the first thing I did. I had to download the driver for the main scanner I use, which changed it a little. Now the button on the scanner doesn't work anymore, but I have a one click icon in the task bar that makes it scan. The scans themselves are also better- it didn't try to auto-crop and make me have to rescan in the admittedly small sample size I am working off so far. It scanned the full glass, which is nice- what I always wanted it to do. I can't tell you the number of times that I've had to rescan something because the scanner was trying to think for me and auto crop. Usually every day...sometimes 5 or 6 times before it would  get it right. I don't want to get my hopes up because I've only done three scans, but it's already better than it was. The colors are better as well. Instead of having to adjust 20/30, now I have to only correct 10/10.

I have not gotten Excel going on it yet- I'm going to try and do that after I finish creating this post. I have no doubt I will be able to, because...a first for me...I set it up all by myself. Normally, my brother does all the set up. But I was too anxious to wait for him to get here, so I did it myself, and I did fine.

The actual keyboard is going to take some time to get used to. I've been using a laptop exclusively since 2003 so I'm not really familiar with a keyboard anymore. It might take some time. I made about 3 dozen typos creating this post, that I am aware of, including one just in this sentence. (I actually typoed the word typo!)

Since I'm so fanatical about backing things up, I only lost one document on the last computer. And it was just my scale model club's monthly newsletter, so I can easily get another copy.
One thing weird...both computer #2 and #3 died on the night of the club's meetings. #1 died before I joined the club. Hopefully #4 will last me a very, very long time.

One of my plans for Wednesday was to write up the post for the October Card of the Day. It's now 2 AM on Thursday as I'm typing this and I have not even begun to tackle it yet, but at least I have a brand new computer to do it on.

2018 has been an interesting year that has seen a lot of things new enter. In February I got a new TV (my last one having died sometime in 2016) and we got a new fridge (our old one was built in 1982!), in July we got a new car, replacing our 1994 Jeep that last ran in 2015, and now in November I got a new computer. (the old one dates to 2012). None of those have been planned, or particularly wanted changes, but the first three have all been improvements on life. I suspect this one will be as well, although I've only been working on it for about 3 hours now. (I actually went to the model club meeting tonight- where I was given 8 free models and 6 free books! And I won a gold in our club quarterly competition. A good day)

Finally, to show the size of the new computer...here's a picture of me holding a full size ruler up in front of it. Yes, it really is that big!