Emily’s Journal

My desktop is finally back to normal (previous related post here).

In February the main processor fan suddenly stopped working and after several blue screens of death (no doubt from from the overheating processor), it finally refused to boot altogether. Then I embarked on a journey to look for the perfect laptop but soon changed my mind after finding out the company for the laptop I like doesn’t support their products that are over 3 years old at all. So it’s back to attempting to get the desktop fixed.

My dad sent the desktop to a small repair shop in Papar without my knowledge. I had a beef with them for misdiagnosing the desktop last year and then did a shoddy job of not re-plugging the rear fans on the casing, causing overheating problems on my computer. Anyway, this time was even worse as they went and reformat my hard drive despite my clear instructions over the phone to not touch it. Although they saved my data (most importantly My Pictures folder), but I lost a lot of programmes that was installed previously. I was pissed speechless when I found out about the reformat when we went to pick the desktop up that Saturday.

They reformatted my PC and installed a lot of Uncle Ho programmes that are mostly junk for me. They also said that the reason my PC broke down was because of the 56k modem that was installed 2 months ago and they took it out. During the next few weeks I spent my time mostly stress-testing the PC to check its stability and learning to do formatting myself. The only formatting I ever did before was on the Acer Travelmate that was completely fool proof. The good people at Acer prepared everything where all I had to do was insert Disk1 and then Disk 2 and then Disk 1 again :P. But the desktop was built by my brother so I had him send me the drivers and also the legit copy of Windows that I lost during the formatting.

Actually it wouldn’t be so bad if they format the drive to the NTFS system, but noooo, they formatted it to FAT32. Even as a somewhat computer newbie, I still have the sense to know that NTFS is better than FAT32. Because of that, the I wasn’t able to use the incredibly useful Windows Live Messenger’s sharing folder. Anyway, reformatting the desktop was a lot easier than I thought. Throughout the process I prayed that there won’t be a blackout. Although I have a UPS and the documentation said the batteries should last 30 minutes, I had never tried that yet.

After 2 days of work, I finally finished reinstalling the essential programmes for my PC. Counting from the days when my internet connection was lousy, I now have A LOT of pictures that needs to be sorted out and posted So stay tuned!

Hey birthday boy! Hope you like the cake, it was tasty… In an old school kind of way

For a nice laugh, head on over to failblog.wordpress.com

Right now I am online using a Knoppix Live CD, which is a nice change of scenery from Windows. I really like Linux because it is free, open source and Windows virus can’t run on it heheh. Once I had to deal with a very troublesome virus on mom’s laptop, it kept hiding itself and infecting every removable media connected to the laptop. My beloved SanDisk USB drive fell victim to it Well Knoppix took care of that easily It was funny to see the malicious file visible (hidden in Windows) and sitting there doing nothing. Just delete and problem solved, for thumbdrive that is, laptop had to undergo a lot of work to get rid of the virus.

The reason I am still using Windows is because of the software/driver compatibilities, for example my favourite free dictionary application WordWeb and screen capture application Gadwin PrintScreen are only for Windows =/ Anyway here’s a screenshot of Konqueror the web browser, is it just me or is it faster than FireFox?

Edit: Beryl looks amazing! There are a lot of demos posted on YouTube but I prefer these two. I wish I have a spare system to play with Linux