The new computer slept through the night, and awakened with two functioning monitors and a functioning network card. In fact, I think it is fully functional. That I regard this as an event worthy of blogging is a measure of how unreliable Vista is.
For some reason, I really like this one. We humans have a hard time not seeing animals’ faces as showing human expressions.
So, this computer came with Norton, which I haven’t removed yet because so far it hasn’t appeared to cause any harm. Naturally, as soon as I got the monitors set up properly, Norton wanted to reboot. Okay, fine, grit my teeth and let it go. I experimented with the boot process this time, and I find that the docking station can be dispensed with. The process now is:
Painful as this is, it certainly beats last week’s routine, which involved considerably more swearing.
Not a ferret, but part of the great family.
I forgot to mention that I found a way to prevent the network adapter from going bye-bye: Vista has a setting that allows it to turn off the adapter to save power. Apparently it is then too stupid to turn it on again. I have that setting turned off, obviously.
The saga of the two monitors continues …
I tried plugging in the docking station that I was using to allow the laptop to control an extra monitor. It actually works, but doesn’t support the resolution of the monitor. Although, in some sense it was better than the video card. Maybe. The video card was maxing out at 1440×900 and the docking station was maxing out at 1280×1024. But I kind of like the wider screen rather than the deeper screen.
So after looking at that for a while, I unplugged the monitor from the docking station and plugged back into the video card. Now we’re back to 1440×900. So for some reason I idly clicked on the “safely remove hardware” icon. The screens go insane, bits and pieces of the image appear on first one and then the other, and finally the whole image moves to the right hand screen, leaving the left blank. On a hunch, I moved the mouse to the right and determined that the left hand screen had become the secondary screen. So I went in to reorganize the monitors again and surprise! the full resolution is now available on both monitors.
I’m making a note of this in case the video falls apart again. The sequence is:
We’ll see if things have settled down and will stay stable through a sleep cycle. In the meantime, I have spent four hours fighting with Vista instead of working on Distributed Proofreading.
So, my little laptop reached its limits — I needed more memory than it had and it spent all its time thrashing. Okay, I’ll just get a desktop computer with lots more memory. So I go to Circuit City because it’s right down the street. That was a bad move.
They had a computer with dual processors and 3gb, which seemed pretty good, but it came with Windows Vista. I wanted to downgrade to Windows XP, but they wanted lots of money for downgrading. Usually one thinks that if you downgrade you don’t pay any more, or even pay less, but not at Circuit City. In retrospect, I suspect it is a matter of supply and demand — no one wants Vista and everyone wants XP so they charge more for XP.
I thought, well, after all, someday we’ll all have to upgrade so I’ll try it. Of course, I want dual monitors (even my grimy little laptop could handle dual monitors, though not well), so I got a video card that supported two monitors. I had them install it so I wouldn’t have to hassle with it. I thought I’d have a turn-key system. Hah!
I take it home and do the Windows Update thing. Oh, it won’t update. I wonder why not? It’s because the system date is wrong. The system date is January 22, 2002. The cretins at Circuit City hadn’t bothered to do the update, though they charged me for it.
Now let’s try plugging in a second monitor. Oh, the plugs don’t match. Well, that was my fault really. I didn’t know how many types there were. I talked to a co-worker who told me he’d had the same problem and showed me the correct cable to get. And the cable worked. The video card + Vista — not so much.
Plug in the second monitor. First monitor goes blank. Tell Windows to use both monitors. First monitor remains blank. Unplug and replug first monitor. Second monitor goes blank and image moves to first monitor. Tell Windows to use both monitors. Second monitor remains blank. Swear at computer. Plug, unplug, reboot, repeat, swear some more — finally get images on both monitors, but at lower resolution than the monitors support.
Use computer for a while. Let it go to sleep. Wake it up and both monitors are there … oh, but now the freaking network card has gone bye-bye. Reboot the computer. Image on only one monitor. Swear at computer. Plug, unplug, reboot, swear, repeat — eventually get images on both monitors, still without full resolution.
This repeats every single time the computer goes to sleep or reboots. I finally set the stupid thing never to sleep. But you can’t avoid the occasional reboot, and when that happens …
So this morning I have to restart because of some security update. This time I cannot get an image on either monitor. I finally turn the computer off, even though I can’t see what it is doing. This is a Bad Move, as it trashes the Windows installation. Reinstall from recovery disks. As the thing reinstalls, it tells me helpful things about Windows Vista, such as, “Time is precious” and “Spend less time solving problems.” I want you to know how much I appreciated that.
So after two hours I have an image on one screen. Again. Plug, unplug, reboot, swear … now I have an image on two monitors, one at full resolution, the other not. And some part of Vista is urging me to reboot again.
I mentioned previously that there are so many laws that it is impossible to get through the day without violating some. Here is another example: FoxNews reports that “MySpace Suicide Case Could Make Us All Criminals.” The case is surely horrible — an adult deliberately drove a child to suicide by inducing her to think she was corresponding with a boy of like age and then cruelly dumping her — but the proposed solution is to criminalize failure to comply with an online service’s terms of service.
How many people even know exactly what the terms of service are for every site they visit? I have no problem at all with an online service kicking people off if they disobey terms of service, but sending them to prison? Some sites say “no profanity in comments” and they back that up by moderating the comments, but if someone persistently writes profane comments, is the proper solution to block their IP, or to send them to prison?
I have been working long hours so haven’t gotten to do much — but I have found adorable ferret pictures:
Ferret taking a nap with a dog. Sigh. I want a ferret.
Ultimate ferret action picture. Sigh. I really want a ferret.