I did the dreaded task of changing Bulletin computers

By John Toth

The Bulletin

Changing Bulletin computers is no tea party, which is why I don’t do it all that often. But when I saw a deal on Black Friday, I could not resist, and now The Bulletin’s main computer is brand new and has all the features that I need - and want.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the process of buying this magnificent addition to the Bulletin’s Production Department, which had not been upgraded for four years, mostly because the old computer I was using was 1) not broken; 2) did the job; 3) had a lot more features, speed and memory than I really needed.

There were a few glitches, but nothing catastrophic. It was a workhorse, and it still is. And, since I hate switching computers, I had no plans to replace it - until I saw its new version for less than what I paid for the old one, and it has a touch screen.

I walked out of the big-box store with this new baby, and all I could think about was what a great deal I got, and why on Earth did I even buy it. Now, I’ll have to go through the nightmare of transferring everything over to the new computer.

I have a bunch of computer glitches and crashing stories that I have accumulated over the years. I like things to go smoothly on deadlines, and the last thing I need is technical headaches.

One time, my 4-year-old daughter ran out of my office and excitedly announced that she “fixed” my computer. She sure did. What she did was a fix to make sure we would not make the press deadline. She stuck a No. 2 pencil inside the floppy drive. I used a floppy disk to store all my articles for the following week’s Bulletin.

I drove over to Lake Jackson to find another floppy drive that was compatible with my computer. I got the last one off the shelf and drove back in hopes of still being able to publish that week.

Well, after an all-nighter, the paper was ready to go. The new floppy drive worked great, and the old one was in the trash. And, I have been able to retell this story over the decades. Sorry, daughter. It’s just a lot of fun. The pencil fix part was not fun at the time, though.

By the way, there are no more floppy drives. I have an external cd/dvd drive, which I never use. But it’s there, just in case.

I have a dozen different programs that need to be loaded each time I change computers, plus all the data that over the decades has accumulated to a hefty sum, to say the least. The last time I made the change, it took the better part of a weekend to get everything transferred, and something always goes wrong.

I began the process, thinking that it was going to be a long day or two. But this time, it was different. The data transfer was much faster. This was incredible. It took minutes rather than hours. Thank you, technological progress. You’re my friend.

Then time came to install a program that I need to count the beans. I’ve had it for about as long as I have had computers. I started using it as a DOS program and then bought the windows version a very long time ago - I want to say almost three decades ago. It has worked well, and that’s all I’ve needed.

I thought I got off scot-free, and we were done. But there was a problem. It would not read the data because it was looking for a driver to download from Microsoft, which apparently became invisible since the last time I needed to reinstall the program. It was driving me crazy.

I decided to look on the Internet machine to see if someone had a solution. It took a while, but I found a chat site where someone was discussing that they had the same problem, and they posted a link to the driver package that Microsoft had that allowed the program to be run on this fancy new machine.

After a lot of agony, it was time to install the fix and fire up the ancient program. Without any fanfare, it loaded in all my data, like it was no big deal. Success is sweet, especially after hours of failure.

This is the main reason I hate changing computers. There is always some glitch along the way. But, it’s a done deal, and I’m once again a happy camper. Mission accomplished - until next time. I love this touch screen. It was all worth it.

Do you have any computer stories - good or bad? Let me know in non-technical language what happened. Email me at john.bulletin@gmail.com