This and That:  Tips, Tricks and Toys
By Elizabeth B. Wright       December 2005

Forget the tips and tricks. Many other articles do a much better job with those than I could possibly do. But I admit to knowing a little bit about toys.

My long-awaited new computer is just about online. After acquiring many components over the years to add to my “dream” computer, the time finally came to put them all into action. With the help and expertise of our club president, David Robbins, the odd bits and pieces were installed in a new case and my XP operating system has been installed.

To paraphrase the old Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem, “how do I build thee, let me count the ways.” With new and left-over hard drives, the option to use removable bays was an easy decision to make. The case and power supply allowed for three such installations. However, getting all the drives to work was not so easy. No problem with the primary drive, containing the operating system. It worked so well I thought the whole thing was a snap. That is until I started trying to get the operating system to recognize the secondary drives. No trouble with the BIOS, in other words, the computer motherboard knew the drives were there. However, Windows XP did not seem to be aware of them or even much care. After trial and error, and much communication with David, the two extra drives are now accessible for storing information. No chance for partitioning them however and since one is a 250G drive, I find that particularly annoying. Many attempts using several different programs resulted in the same frustration when trying to partition the extra hard disks. Each time I was returned to the original problem of Windows not recognizing the drives. So I have settled for the one size fits all sort of solution, leaving each in its original size. At present, I have the boot drive (which is partitioned) plus one 250G and one 80G drive. Hopefully, that will hold me for a while.

Now this new computer is NOT state of the art. It is still an ATA machine, not the newer SATA, but it does have 1G of memory, a pretty fast CPU and plenty of USB ports. My next step is to get my printer, scanner and other peripherals attached, then get my router and DSL connection in place. After that comes the fun task of registering, authorizing and authenticating my Windows XP operating system. It will also have to be updated with all the fixes and patches that seem to be the rage these days.

Let me reiterate what I wrote in previous articles. My plan is to have one machine for the internet and one for my work and play. I am tired of hearing all the dire things that can happen to precious data when malicious hackers invade through the communication lines. I don’t mind trying to keep a second computer clean, as long as I don’t have to fear losing any of my personal files. Now I am very close to achieving this combination.

I suspect December will ring in an explosion of computer related gift ideas, along with hefty prices and promises of wonderful rebates. Anyone who has read my column very long knows how I feel about rebates. (Why not pay a million dollars for a house with the promise of a $750,000 rebate???). Since the first of November, we have seen ads urging us to take advantage of holiday offers on everything from candy to the most extreme consumer goods. And undoubtedly every imaginable offering in computer configurations and entertainment packages will be dangled in front of us. So if you are hoping for something electronic this Christmas season, there should be ample opportunity to pass the word to whoever will be stocking your stocking. Happy Holidays.
 

Elizabeth Wright is a member of the CCOKC and a regular writer for the eMonitor