There is hope for me yet.

[Enzo]

My god, I may be a computer geek... nah.

I had to do our taxes, so I got this years TurboTax, and went to install it. STOP, YOU MUST HAVE SERVICE PACK THREE. OK, I'll install service pack three. Go to microsoft and attempt to download it. Every time it kept hanging up at some point where it said it was processinjg something. I even left it running for hours while I went to lunch and did errands. Hadn't budged. Crashes at teh same spot every time.

SCrew this. MY 500 Meg of RAM was plenty when it was new, but these days, they want that as a minimum, plus my print spooler was missing and it couldn't communicate with the sound card. Fine. Go to Best Buy and get a new computer. I forget, but it has the better part of a terabyte of HDD, lots of RAM, and a 16x/40x/200x/god knows whatX DVD deck. 150 USB holes. WHat's not to like? WIndows 7. Oh. Well it works OK I guess. Looks all different. The strip at the bottom with the time/date and some buttons, I'd really prefer at top, but unlike XP< this won;t let me move it. Oh well. But it doesn;t need service pack three.

Turbo tax went in flawlessly, and so did the tax information, efile and I'm done. I had the presence of mind to stick my back turbotax files on a flash drive. Turbotax looks at previous years and fills in the needed data in the current year. Worked.

But I have tons of stuff still on the old computer, and no reason to stop using the old one completely.

SO I bought a KVM switch.

I was expecting a box with three 15 pin connectors on the back and a big knob on front. But that is ancient history. Now it is a small plastic thing about the size of a large bar of soap. Just large enough to have connectors all around for everything.

I hooked it up like it told me, and darned if it didn;t work. ALmost.

I have a wireless USB mouse. The little USB receiver plug used to sit in a USB hole in the back of the old system. I plugged it in a USB hole on the new one and it worked fine. The KVM switch has holes for keyboard and mouse - both USB - so I stuck the little receiver in that. The new system worked fine that way. I then hit the button for the old system. It comes up aqnd seems to work, but the cursor is motionless in the center of the screen. Crap. APparently it had to figure something out, because a minute later, it started responding to the mouse, and it all worked fine.

So I did some file maintenance in the old system, and the new system went to sleep over there. Then I hit the button for the new system, and the screen went black. Still asleep. OK move the mouse to wake it up. Doesn't wake up. A tap on the power switch on the new computer woke it up,and it then responded to the mouse. Evidently, it cannot see the mouse through the KVM when asleep.

Geez I hate dealing with computers. Maybe going back to a wired mouse will make this work.

[Lance]

The strip at the bottom with the time/date and some buttons, I'd really prefer at top, but unlike XP< this won;t let me move it.

Right-Click on it and uncheck Lock the taskbar. Now you can stick it anywhere you like.

[Мастер]

I think this is a big part of my issue with Windows. I suspect a lot of the things I would like to do, can be done, I just don't know how.

One of the things I really miss in Windows that I have in Linux is the whole set of text processing/comparison tools. If there is a way to do a "diff" in Windows, I don't know what it is . . .

But Enzo, buying a new computer to do your taxes? That seems a little excessive. Couldn't KLA2 do them? How different can Canadian taxes be? :P

Or perhaps you were in a situation where you would have bought a new computer soon enough anyway, and this was just the specific trigger.

[Lance]

One of the things I really miss in Windows that I have in Linux is the whole set of text processing/comparison tools. If there is a way to do a "diff" in Windows, I don't know what it is . . .

The FC Command has been there forever. This is an XP article but it is the same in Windows 7.

Or download WinMerge. It's free, open source and has a nice graphic interface.

And Google is your friend: Text Comparison Tools <- Do click this, for the laugh anyway.

[wring]

the taxes were due like, the next day. And he had a nagging wife at home, who had been asking about the status of the taxes for over a month. Waiting was not an option.

[Enzo]

Oh, go watch a cop show...


My old computer needed a lot more RAM, it had damaged files that prevented some functions from happening. I had been planning the replacement a while, just tax time made the decision to do it now.

The bill for more RAM and repairing the various issues would have been close to the cost of the new unit anyway.