Monday 23 December 2013

Belated upgrade

This morning a parcel for me arrived by courier from PC World. On Saturday I ordered a disc copy of Windows 7 in order to upgrade my work Windows Vista laptop. It's a well specified machine, but the flaws of  Vista betrays its potential, and connectivity is often a problem. An operating system refresh is preferable to replacing a reliable serviceable machine with many more years of life in it. 

So, after making a funeral preparation visit in Danescourt for a service the day before New Year's Eve, before lunch, I went to the office mid-afternoon just to do the installation, and was amazed that it should take four hours to complete.

Admittedly, the outcome was satisfactory, with all existing programs, settings and data preserved. It did however, wipe the machine's master boot record, depriving me of access to the secure partition with  an install of KDE Linux on it. That problem shouldn't be too difficult to fix when I have a spare hour. It will inevitably take a while to draw down all the security patches and modifications to Windows 7 that have arrived over the past few years, but never mind. It's worth being patient with because it works well, and is familiar. No need to waste time on learning how to use yet another user interface with the most recent upgrades, Windows 8 and 8.1.

While I waited for the machine to finish the upgrade, Ashley went over the documents we need to send in preparation for the next meeting we have with Council officers on Jan 2nd. The office was quiet with the effective abandonment of inessential regular duties as the festive season takes hold, and it meant we could work without distraction for a change.  Even so, the calm was punctuated by the arrival of a series of Twitter notifications advising that one of mine regarding William Dalrymple's 'Point of View' programme has been re-tweeted half a dozen times. It never happened to me before! 

I didn't get home for supper, until nine o'clock. Just as well I don't have any early duties tomorrow.

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