Laptop giveaway

Wednesday we drove to Bishopston in Bristol to visit Marion, an old family friend from our St Paul's days, whom Clare has renewed contact with in recent years. The purpose of our visit was to give her a much loved old laptop, still working well, for sending emails and surfing the web. As she's still very much a beginner in computer use,  so there was no point in making a big dent in her savings when her needs are limited, and she's not yet certain how well she'll get on with the technology as a late starter.

I configured for a seven year old HP Pavilion 15" laptop running Linux Mint KDE sweetly and made it as simple as possible to work with. There was just one problem, establishing a wi-fi connection from her apartment. Although close to the communal area of her housing complex where the router serving residents and their guests is based, the signal wouldn't reach. It was always a bit slow establishing a connection at home, but in this environment it seemed impossible to attach to the network. 

Fortunately, just in case of problems, I packed the much travelled HP Pavilion 11.3" Windows 7 netbook, bought when I retired. It's crossed the Atlantic twice, once to Canada and once with Rachel to Arizona. It's been to Sicily, Spain and Switzerland with me. Rachel returned it at Christmas once she'd acquired a replacement Mac. It runs on mains as the battery is dead, but it too runs sweetly. It wouldn't connect in Marion's place either, but when we went to the communal area, it did. Being so much smaller, it occupied less space on Marion's small desk. I created a User area for her and deleted old data, packed the big laptop to take home, leaving Marion with a big grin and a learning curve ahead of her. There are other Windows users among her neighbours who can help if she has problems, so I don't expect too many tech support phone calls.

We then drove to Southmead to see Amanda and James. When he and I were chatting he told me that his five year old Sony laptop, whose broken screen I'd replaced two years ago, had a broken screen once more. He also told me that he was getting curious about learning Linux, which is what I'd expect eventually from a lad doing computer studies in HE College. The big 15" HP laptop was just perfect and at the right moment. His main use of his Sony laptop was skyping friends while gaming on-line. I showed him how to access the package manager, download and install Skype for Linux, and set him off on a new learning curve, which will fit in well with what he's presently engaged with.

I returned home, feeling that that I'd made progress in returning working old machines to useful service. I have one more to off-load, another HP laptop, nine years old, slow but still running Linux a lot faster than it ever ran Windows XP. I should find a home for this one too.

Thursday was less eventful. A visit to the office to prepare and upload material to the DISC database, then a conversation with Ashley, continued later in a phone call, all about the next stage in planning CBS finances. The outcome of this was several hours spent drafting a new policy document, and bed after midnight, though not before I'd taken a picture of the waning moon with my recently acquired second hand Minolta 'beer can' lens, leaning out of the spare bedroom window in the freezing cold. I couldn't think of a better antidote to the effect of spending hours staring at a small screen.

Oh dear, I'm becoming a moon bore.

  

Epiphany Sunday farewell

Clare and I went to the eight o'clock Eucharist at St Catherines before breakfast and helping Rachel pack everything ready to depart. As her Mac is currently unserviceable, I've given her my little HP 11.6" travelling laptop to take back with her. It's been a constant companion in my travels over the past three years - Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, North Wales, Kenilworth. I think I may miss it. O wonder if I shall get along as well with the new 14" touchscreen machine - less eye strain hopefully.

Last night I discovered Libre Office wasn't working, possibly due to an installation error when I updated a few days ago, or else something I did when removing all my data to make way for hers. So be it, I set about downloading and re-installing afresh, but the TalkTalk Broadband internet connection was so erratic, stopping and starting as it often does in the evening and at night, that the installation file download failed twice, and then a third time while acquiring a copy of Foxit Reader. After a half hour wasted waiting for downloads to throw up error messages, I looked in my new laptop's download folder and found a copy of Libre Office I could transfer and use to re-install, and all was well.

We left in reasonable time and arrived at Thatcham in good time for a fine Sunday dinner of roast lamb, followed by trifle. We made our goodbyes and headed back down the M4 while there was enough light for Clare to drive half the distance. As soon as we were home and fed, Clare took down the cards and un-decorated the Christmas tree. No point in waiting for the real Epiphany day tomorrow, now that our magic month of family togetherness is over, I guess.

Touching adjustment

Thankfully the rain stopped by the time I headed out to Thornhill Crematorium for an early afternoon funeral. Because of the holiday season the bereaved family had to wait seventeen days before they could lay their loved one to rest. Notification of another funeral for next week came in this morning. The death occurred on the same day, but this family will have had to wait twenty six days. How hard it is for anyone, except perhaps the smaller children, to take the usual pleasure in Christmas and New Year while waiting for a final farewell and closure.

Later in the afternoon I went out on another office tech' acquisition trip to Staples and PC World for a smaller more travel portable sized laptop than the one purchased a few days ago for a workstation. Nowhere to be found were any Windows 7 machines, so I had to settle for ordering a Windows 8.1 HP Pavilion with 14" screen which will be home delivered, so that I can set it up without the distractions of work going on around me. It won't be quite the nightmare the last one was, if I've learned from that awful experience, but it will take time to re-trace steps that will give me a setup I can live with. 

This computer will have a touchscreen. Since I started using the Android toting Asus Transformer Infinity with its slick touch interface and keyboard, I've become sufficiently habituated to the basic moves to find myself unwittingly stroking the non-touch screen of my little HP Win 7 laptop. It's going to be interesting to see if I'll get on better with Windows 8.1, designed with touch in mind, than I did on a Windows 8.1 machine that didn't have the touch option. Am I becoming a slower learner, reluctant to change my habits, I wonder?