I finally learned enough about my new PC bought in September. I bought a Compaq Presario 5715 which has a 13 Gig hard-drive, ZIP drive and the usual other enhancements. A Lexmark Z11 printer and a USB Visioneer scanner filled out the list of extras that I needed. But I surely do miss the convenience of using the T/S 2068. Now when I want to use a computer I turn it all on and wait while the programs get loaded and go through the password thing.
A new computer is like a new baby: When you bring them home from the hospital or store is when you find that you need this or that doodad to get going. After I got it unboxed and put together, I found that I lacked a mouse pad so off to Staples to get one. Staples is very close to where we live; perhaps, less than a half mile. So I walk over to the store.
To get the computer registered with Compaq I had to do it by modem through a toll free number – the computer knew the number I didn’t – and I kept getting a message “MODEM not turned on” After several tries it dawned on me that maybe the cord that I had used from computer to the telephone wall outlet was bad. I tested it with a telephone and it was dead. Changed cords and it worked the next time I fired up the computer. I will get on the internet as soon as I get more comfortable with the computer.
This is a new house and it takes a lot of extra time to get things set up the way we like it. Trying to get grass to grow is something else. I have to water almost everyday since it has rained only four times since we moved on the 27th of July. Here in Forsyth they put two water meters on the new houses. One is the outside faucets and the other is the normal water usage. That way you don’t pay sewer rate on the water you use to water the lawn. I don’t think that the outside meter registers what we use for the lawn since we pay the minimum rate for water for that. And all that takes time from my computing.
I checked the D cells on the set of Renewal RAY-O-VAC batteries that power the Z88 on turn off and I can’t detect any voltage drop. I would say that D cells is the way to go except that they make a heavy addition to the weight of the Z88 and are a bulky addition to the neatness of the Z88. I will have to get back to using the Z88 or learning to use it. I have the hardware and software to upload/download to and from a PC so I need to try that out sometime.
Ever since we moved to Indiana we have not had to changed the clocks for daylight savings time or back, here we had to. Yuck! I never realized that we had so many clocks, watches or devices with clocks in them. The Compaq computer had already made the change without asking me but had a screen to ask if that was O.K. Just now I realized that I have one more to change – the Z88. One more besides that which is a sort of telephone number note retainer which is a calculator sized gadget. Yes! I collect junk and store giveaways.
I use Wordpad which is a simple wordprocessor that is part of Windows and is rather simple but can do a lot of things. But! I do miss MSCRIPT probably since I used it so many years. When I get better at this computer I will move up to Word 6 which has more bells and whistles.
In the process of connecting up my computer, I had all those cords and cables so I used a spiral wraparound cable bundler. They are available at Radio Shack and some discount lumber yards in the electrical area. I did end up tying some together with cord string spaced about every nine inches or so. I did make the cables look far more neater. On the keyboard pullout shelf where I had the mouse, I soon found that the weight of the cord would pull the mouse to the back of the shelf. I fastened a wood spring clothes pin the back edge of the shelf to grip the cord. That works just fine and I also saw later a reference to tie the free mouse cord to the keyboard cord. I pass along that since I had a problem with the joystick cable back when I had a joystick connected up to the T/S 2068 and the cord seemed to get tangled easily. By fastening it that way would have eliminated the problem. 0/0.