Computer knowledge learned the hard way.

I’ve learned a few things about my desktop computer, an HP 735n, in the last 3 years. It can suffer a migraine just like a human can. Have you ever heard of system overload, having too many programs and not enough space? Well, I found that out last year. My computer slowed down to a crawl when I tried using the AOL browser I’ve been using since 2001. I upgraded to Internet Explorer 8, which did work for almost nine months before I couldn’t get to any of my mailboxes except my Gmail account. My favorite social media sites and game sites remained elusive without using my Gateway laptop, which I’ll affectionately call Junior. My desktop would only recognize IE-6.

Lately, Google chrome on my laptop started showing when there were security errors even after going through all the trouble to upgrade my computer drivers. The Examiner website had a certificate that was not safe to browse under on my laptop or smart phone. Posting articles were a problem too. There were either a lot of pop up ads or slow loading pages that stalled my computer.

The hardest thing I had to do was get rid of programs that were duplicated or not used. Some of my applications came with the computer. But the old stuff was taking up space, so it had to go. One group of games I never touched from the Games Channel, so I copied those and took then off the computer. A lot of my files were already backed up on CD-ROM., so all I had to do was remove them. While I fretted over what I removed, it made a big difference with the amount of memory I had. I went from 448 MB of memory in the beginning to something like over 500 MB. It might be more than that now that Mozilla Firefox replaced IE-8.

Using Google Chrome was difficult. The only way to get rid of the pop up ads was to do this for one week if there were settings for this. Clicking on the X opted one out for 24 hours. Otherwise one would have to call one of the independent companies to remove them.

It helped that my sister upgraded my ancient dinosaur of a computer to two gigabytes of memory last Christmas. My computer was so old that it wouldn’t take the two gig stick. It had to have two one gig sticks. Two weeks ago, I found out that the browser on my computer was the wrong one for my system. Microsoft.com recommended that I use either Safari or Mozilla Firefox. I chose Firefox and couldn’t tear myself away from my computer until late afternoon most days. Junior will finally get a well-needed rest after almost four years of constant use. I use Google Chrome on there, which also buts heads with IE-8 and stalls my flash player every time I play my favorite games on Facebook. Internet Explorer 8 would stall so much by itself that I had to sign into Yahoo four times before getting through the mail in my inbox on the smaller computer. I will remove IE-8 on Junior and give him a charge before storing him in his case.

It felt good to be back on my desktop computer where the good stuff is.