Back in the saddle, maybe

It's been two full months since my last post. Here's why:
My old computer began to act up in January, and by February it had started to show signs that the end was near. I had some quick diagnostic work done, gave due consideration to the doctors’ pronouncements and decided to put the old one down. There was a nerve wracking night when the doctors evaluated the old hard drive to see what, if anything, could be saved. I was lucky: nothing was lost, or maybe I should say that I have not yet noticed anything missing. I’ve been without a functioning computer in the house for about two months: if nothing else, this experience has taught me how dependent I had become on computers.

The new box and its accoutrements did not arrive until mid-March. The fun began after I copied the contents of the old hard drive from an external hard drive onto the new one. The new pc has a new operating system. The old one ran on Windows XP, the new one on Windows 7. It turns out that many applications do not run on Windows 7 the way they run on Windows XP; evidently, some don’t run at all. For several days I was banging my head on the wall trying to get the old camera software to work. I up loaded all relevant updates and followed directions meticulously – all to no avail. Finally I gave in and called the camera manufacturer’s service center. I explained the problem and was very heartened to hear the cheery voice on the other end of the line say “I know just what the problem is.” And sure enough, as we spoke on the phone, he had the camera software up and running within two or three minutes: kudos to the team at Canon technical support.

This week I’ll be tackling the FrontPage issues. All of my web sites were done on the old box using FrontPage 2003. A bit of on-line searching has turned up some distressing commentary: Microsoft no longer supports FrontPage 2003. It’s pushing a new product which, at first glance, seems to do a lot more than I will ever ask of it. I’m also seeing commentary which suggests that FrontPage 2003 will not run with Windows 7.

Going into this new computer search, my greatest concern was losing data from the old box. Now I realize that the varied issues arising from trying to use old applications in a very newly developed operating system are going to eat a lot more of my time than I expected.