After several more failed attempts, late last night Bella (my old laptop) finally managed to complete the new Windows 10 update. Good girl!
However… Realizing that these frequent update struggles are not likely to get any better, I actually also “took the plunge” yesterday afternoon and went across town to the huge Media Markt store to look at (and buy) a new one.
It was not really a random decision – I had done my research online first. As I wrote at the end of my previous post, I really felt I wanted one very similar to my old one (same size, same kinds of ports etc) - just “perkier” (more memory, more storage)… This proved easier said than found. One that looked promising at first (in my online search) turned out to have a few things against it (which might also explain its low price). And others that filled the requirements were so expensive it really made me wonder if I was perhaps setting my goals way to high…
But then, in yet another online search, I suddenly came upon one which actually seemed to fit all my requirements, and at quite a good price too. Their ad informed me that the MM store in my town had it in stock, but didn’t specify how many - and the web shop had only five… So I decided it was worth going to MM to have a look – immediately.
I haven’t been to that store more than once or twice before. It’s really huge, and I felt quite lost when I came in there. But luckily, they also turned out very service-minded – and it seemed I had come at an hour when there were very few other customers in the store. I got almost immediate attention from one (young, male) shop assistant. I showed him the specification that I had printed out at home the same day, and he set off finding it for me. It turned out not so easy. The machine I wanted turned out not to be among the dozens on display. But their stock inventory did say there should be two left… The guy told me I could just stay where I was while he kept on searching. Round and round the shelves he went… scratching his head… But eventually he found it – just the one. He got the box opened for me so that I could have a look at its exterior. Unfortunately I could not see it with the screen turned on. But as it seemed to be the very last specimen of its kind, and according to the specifications just what I wanted, and at a good price… I decided to buy it. The shop assistant too, the more he looked into the details (and the price), seemed more and more impressed with it as well. He also seemed to wonder what I wanted all this capacity and storage for…
I should add (because I found it rather amusing myself) that before the purchase was completed, I think probably all the staff in the store had been involved in some way or other. While the first guy was running around searching, others came up to me and asked if I needed help; and first guy in turn asked others for help with this and that.
The laptop is still at the store as I decided to accept the offer (for a certain amount extra, of course) to let them do the initial setup (Windows 10!) and backup copy for me + installation of antivirus software. They called this afternoon to tell me it’s ready. (And I assume that also means it turned out to work as it should!) So I intend to go and pick it up tomorrow.
The offer also included transferring files from my old computer (if I brought that in). But I decided against that, as I'm really not sure that I want “the whole mess" of old files copied straight over to the new one. Again this decision seemed to make the shop assistant curious… But when I explained that one of my hobbies is photography, and that I have more than seven years of photos collected on my old computer (not to mention lots of other stuff too!), he seemed to begin to “get it”…
So instead I also bought a new extra external hard drive, and will copy my old files myself to that. But I feel I want to start afresh with only the more recent stuff transferred to the new computer to start with, taking my time to re/organize things. A lot of old files can probably just be left on the extra drive to be collected later if I need them.
Copying everything will take time, but as the old computer is still working (and I can let it do this copying offline!) there’s no hurry. I got started today… The last five years of camera photos (2012-2017 = 35480 images… took around 3 hours to copy… It’s just the “tip of the iceberg”, though. (I have had digital cameras since 2006; and also have lots of copied and scanned images from before that. And music, and various documents, and…)
My blogging may be set aside a bit until I get things “sorted”… But we’ll see! Downloading various software to do with blogging will of course be at the top of my list…
Photo from a walk on Easter Eve. It’s still very chilly… I’ve been taking in my own (small) pots of daffodils from the balcony almost every evening the last week because of frosty nights!
