Today it’s X for the A- Z Blogging Challenge. I have an X in mind today for sure!

I’ve been raging a battle for the soul/ mind/ of my computer or at least my own sanity for weeks and weeks. It started months ago when MS Windows had a final meltdown and would not let me recover Windows as my OS (operating system). I thought I was going to have to figure out how to buy a new computer when I finally found a solution, Linux. The version I installed was Ubuntu and it worked fine for a couple of months, or at least a month (it’s all becoming like a bad joke at this point).

When that crashed and burned I tried reinstalling many times. It would work for a day and then die. Most often it just gave me errors and would not work at all. But, I did not want to settle on the option of having to get a new computer. This past week I installed Xubuntu and it worked for most of a week. But, this week it slowed to a crawl and I had to reboot the computer and then… no dial tone. (Not literally no dial tone, you know what I mean). It’s like my computer has become allergic to any and every OS (operating system, as you may remember).

Today I installed Xubuntu on my Mother’s computer, just as a mad science experiment. She isn’t home, still away in Florida until May at least. Plus, she just bought a new laptop and doesn’t really know what she is going to do with this desktop anyway. So, why not try a little computer brain surgery? Xubuntu works fine for this computer. The only problem is a site that uses Shockwave/ Adobe Flash (which is something I usually curse at for eating bandwidth and being terminally slow anyway). So, I have to finally admit the problem is probably my computer hardware, most likely the hard disk.

This leaves me with the option of having to buy a new hard disk and install it. In the end this could cost not much less than buying a new computer which would be nice as mine is at least five years old. Acer would not support my computer hardware or software due to it’s age. Which seemed really asshat of them. I don’t know how they can get away with that. No wonder there are so many computers dumped out if they only get a very limited shelf life from the manufacturers.

Anyway, onwards from the issue of landfill… I do have one other option which I am considering (mainly due to the fact of not really having money to buy another computer). I could take the hard disk out of my Mother’s computer and install it in my own. It’s a bit of a Frankenstein moment. But I think I could do it. A boyfriend showed me how to do it once a few years ago. It seemed pretty straight forward, unscrew this and snap in that. After all, the rest of my hardware is fine, better than my Mother’s computer. I think the hard disks are the same, both 512MB. So it could work.

Right now, I am taking a break from it all. I’m going to Second Cup in town and getting coffee beans to bring home and a latte to drink there. I just have to pick out a good book to take along with me. Something that has nothing to do with computers!