Failures Of An IT Graduate

Some of you may have seen on Facebook last week that I was having issues with my old laptop. Actually my 'old' laptop was only purchased in December 2010 at considerable expense, so I was not at all happy when the hard drive decided it didn't want to play anymore. Fortunately I was able to back everything up onto an external hard drive or there would have been some serious problems. It was my now fault really, I had only said the week before that I was planning on upgrading to a Mac at the end of the year but wanted to  wait until we were a bit more financially prepared, especially since we would need to change over all the accounting software etc as well as the initial purchase price. I should have known if I said it out loud I was screwed and sure enough, last Sunday morning I got the Blue Screen of Death and decisions needed to be made.

Very Tempting Image Credit

Mr Bond and I umm'd and aaah'd about whether to buy another cheap laptop to get us through to the end of the year or to just bite the bullet now and make the change. Either way it was going to be a costly exercise and with invoicing (and blogging) to be done, a decision had to be made quickly! Admittedly, the thought of replacing the hard drive had crossed my mind but I kept the idea to myself because I had never had to do that before and was convinced that simply buying another computer was the easiest solution for all of us. Sadly Mr Bond realised that it was possible to replace a hard drive and decided that would be our best course of action. Given that his wife has a degree in IT, he probably figured it would be a piece of cake or at the very least we could delay having to fork over the cash for a new machine.


Sorry honey, turns out I was never that crash hot at the techy stuff.


I spent the best part of Monday and Tuesday making sure that I had backed up everything correctly so once I had installed the new hard drive it would just be a matter of restoring all my files. This was my view for roughly four hours on Tuesday night...

Finally I was satisfied that I had everything saved so Mr Bond and I ripped the old hard drive out and installed the new one. Success! Everything fit back in nicely and I was all set to fire her up. Then the screen came up with a message about requiring a bootable disk. Damnit! All of my Windows software had been pre-loaded, I had no boot disk! 


After much swearing and head banging Mr Bond contacted a friend who had only recently gone through a similar issue and had in his possession a Windows 7 boot disk. Hooray! I still had my old product key so we were back on track.


Over the next two hours I diligently reloaded programs and files. I was going to have to set up our wi-fi again but I had seriously had enough of looking at that screen by then and decided to deal with that in the morning.

The next morning I woke up most pleased with myself for saving us considerable money with my extraordinary skills. I began setting up to connect the wi-fi when I started getting messages about needing to install a Network Driver Adapter. WTF??? By now my brain felt like it was melting but I was determined not to let this beat me. Using Mr Bond's netbook I scoured the net looking for drivers. Downloading and transferring, installing and failing over and over until I was beyond even thinking about what to do next. Feebly I sent Mr Bond a text saying that we had lost all of the network drivers, I couldn't install MYOB and if I didn't do something drastic soon, we wouldn't be able to do the invoicing and pays that night. 

Yes, Stupid Computers! Image Credit

Mr Bond may be adverse to spending money if he doesn't absolutely have to, particularly when he does not see the value in something (what's so special about a Mac anyway?) but he also sees time as money and given that I had spent the last three days tearing my hair out in front of a blank screen, he decided enough was enough. His exact words to me were "just go and buy the f*&#ing thing! You have wasted three days already!" 


So that was that.


I already had a good idea of what I was after so off I toddled to the nearest Apple distributor, swiftly made my purchase and returned home. I don't know how else to describe it other than to say it just worked. That is after an exhaustive search for the On button (20 minutes in total) but once I fired that baby up it was all systems go, and instantly! I am not exaggerating when I say every thing is shinier on a Mac.

So that was Wednesday, which does not explain why it took me until the following Monday to do another blog post, but in my haste to convert to the greener and glossier grass of iMac I forgot one minor detail - Windows Live Writer. I LOVE this program because it looks as though you are writing right onto your blog site, it allows scheduling on posts and most importantly, it was holding all of my half-written drafts that I could no longer access. Oh, that and the fact that everything on a Mac is kind of backwards, so I am having to unlearn all of my Windows short cuts and get my head around a new system. Fortunately a lot of it is pretty simple.


Please bear with me, it has taken a little time, but I am almost back up to speed and looking forward to learning how to make the most of my new toy!


Linking up this week with Diary of a SAHM for #iBOT. She has a murder mystery to solve today, can you guess who is guilty???