Monday, December 10, 2012

Mini disaster

I know my problem is nothing compared to typhoons in the Phillipines or people dying of cancer, however.
I bought my current laptop way back in 2007. My previous desktop is sitting beside my desk but I have not switched it on since shipping it to New Zealand. The big mistake was in July 2011 when I bought an Ipad2 instead of a new laptop. I have hated the Ipad and only used it under duress when travelling. I did not realise it is not a substitute for a proper computer just a very poor but light for travelling accessory.
In January this year I upgraded my laptop to mountain lion or whatever the latest version was (there is now another update). It was much easier when the just used numbers, 10. 6 is obviously an upgrade to 10.5 but who knows where one is with lion, tigers, cougars or whatever.
I was horrified to discover that my much loved AppleWorks program had disappeared. I had to buy and learn Pages and Numbers. They are far too complicated for my small needs. My Christmas card list was on a database and that has completely gone. I use to love Apple, now it is a swear word.
I took the database on a thumb drive to Australia and printed it out.

The week before last I composed my 2012 Christmas message. Last Monday I began to print it out. While it was printing, I decided to create a spread sheet of the names and addresses previously on the database. One address was very long and not complete on the printout and so I thought I would email the person to obtain their correct snail mail address. Disaster struck as the computer completely seized up. I tried to restart and a blinking question mark appeared. I had not seen that since the bad
old days in the early 90's when I ran a bank of apple computers in a school library. Then it appeared almost weekly on one or other machine. I searched and tried all the repair methods I once used. No success. I took it to the local Apple dealer and paid $30 to be told the hard drive had collapsed and
was unrecoverable. I took it to another repair shop and paid another $30. They rang to say they also could not repair but could send it to a forensic lab with a high success rate. Only problem it will cost $750 to $800. However it holds all my photos of travels from 2007 to 2011. The only photos on the lipad are my travels this year. Also my accounts but I think I backed them up in September. I am not sure as I cannot put the USB drives into an ipad.
Having been assured I only need to pay if successful, I agreed and should know the worst by the end of this week.

I have always intended buying a new machine when I go to Sydney next week. They are cheaper there because GST is 10% in Australia and 15% in NZ. I was thinking of buying a MacBook Air  and selling the Ipad on trademe. Now I will buy a MacBook Pro and continue to struggle with the Ipad when travelling. At the moment I am backing up the Ipad and this years travel photos onto ICloud but it has been going for over 24 hours and still says another 6 hours to go.

I have friends my age who do not own a computer. I am beginning to envy their uncomplicated life.
I have drawers full of slides taken on holidays from the 70's and 80's including 3 trips to Europe. I never look at them but have plans for one day. I even brought the slide projector from Australia for that one day. Photos of the 90' s and up to 2006 are printed outand in folders, more easy to access but still rarely checked. So why should I worry about these on the computer? It is just nice to know they are there and some are still a bit too recent to lose.

If I had my laptop, I would research and include a cartoon to illustrate but do not know how on an Ipad. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

UPDATE
Hard drive is completely wrecked and data unrecoverable. Unsure whether to be happy that I have saved $750 or sad that all my photos including 3 trips to Europe and one to North America have gone. Only exception are those on this blog.

1 comment:

Birdie said...

Oh, sweetie. Three laptops ago I had to have the data extracted from my crashed hard drive. It was everything I had written for work. Cost: $2500. My church paid for it, and I have backed up everything religiously since. Ha.

I have a suggestion for the dreaded iPad. I have one, too, and with two tools I absolutely love it. Go to zagg.com and buy a Zaggfolio case with keyboard. It makes your iPad into a mini-tablet computer. No more touchscreen typing! It costs $99, but then all decent cases cost $80 anyway. Well worth the additional cost.

Then download the free PocketCloud app onto your iPad and follow instructions to access your new laptop. Once connected, you can leave your laptop at home—on and online—and use the iPad from anywhere online to bring up your home desktop and use it exactly as you would the computer itself. It's GREAT.

When I finally updated my Mac OS, I lost not only Appleworks but also the faithful printer we've had for years. The printer works fine, but HP won't make a driver for the new OS. (They conveniently offer a brand new identical printer that DOES have the driver.) I had to turn all my Appleworks docs into pdfs to save them before Iost the program. Took a week.

The things we do for "convenience!" I feel your pain. :)