[onoway]

PassedOut, on 2011-November-24, 15:11, said:

We have to deal with short outages now and then during winter and, as Blackshoe says, have found the APS products very reliable. Via a USB connection, the UPS will shut down your computer automatically and gracefully when the power goes out even when you are away. The battery keeps the computer running during the shutdown even though the power has gone down -- especially useful if you don't have an auxiliary generator.

I missed that post somehow! Thanks for bringing it up, I'll certainly follow up on that.

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2011-November-24, 10:56, said:

firmware? Is that stuff I would get, in this case, from Netgear? The firm?

"Firmware" is software installed into a chip. You can download it from their web site. For free.

There are different versions of the model you have; there may or may not be different firmware versions for the different routers. Make sure you download the right one. Also, there should be instructions where you get the download explaining how to install it . The instructions may be included in the download package.

Funnily enough, right after I posted that last message this morning, I looked across the room and my Airport Express router was blinking orange (instead of green) at me. So I fired up the Airport Utility software that came with the router, and it said I needed to update the firmware. So I pushed the "do it" button, and it did it. Easy peasy. Took about 30 seconds.

[blackshoe]

onoway, on 2011-November-24, 14:37, said:

WOW. I went to the link and it tells me that although the laptop can hold up to 2 GB of memory it currently only has 768 mg. And if I have only 50% of that left...so it makes sense to start there! Now I have to figure out how to get the links of my favorites file onto something to save as many of them are older and impossible to track down through the noise and reverberating echo of search engine results. This looks promising for this geriatric laptop at least, as 1 GB of memory is about $45- a whole lot cheaper than a new computer! I'm not so sure about the desktop, I think it has lurkers somewhere. Thank you!

If I were you, I'd get two 1 GB sticks and remove the 768 MB one. Your computer will thank you for it. The old stick probably isn't worth anything. Maybe you can give it away. Back when I was playing around with hardware a lot I had at least half a dozen old RAM sticks laying around. Eventually I just tossed 'em all.

[helene_t]

the cursor darting problem may be caused by a fault in your touchpad or other alternative pointing device. if you use the mouse only for pointing but your computer has an alternative pointing device, you should disable the later in the cmos setup. Yes I know that this may sound cryptical but you will need a computer geek to help you with that anyway. of course I don' t know if that is the problem in your case but it has been in my case.

I am not sure if 1GB is enough. If memory is the problem then there may be little other to do than to buy more memory. If there is some obsolete software that runs all the time you may want to deactivate it or remove it, though.

I had a 512 mb laptop from year 2000 which I was happy with until 2009. Then for each OS upgrade it became more and more inadequate and a few month ago I ditched it - the memory could not be expanded and also the 20GB harddisk was close to running full. So much for the 18 month life cycle of hardware. I think that a windows computer needs to be replaced when it is 2 years old, a mac when it is 4 and linux when it is 8.

Deleting files and emails won't solve your problems unless you are getting "disk full" or "mailbox full" error messages. But there could be various configuration issues and there could be garbage in specific places like the browser cache that could cause problems.

[onoway]

blackshoe, on 2011-November-24, 18:16, said:

If I were you, I'd get two 1 GB sticks and remove the 768 MB one. Your computer will thank you for it. The old stick probably isn't worth anything. Maybe you can give it away. Back when I was playing around with hardware a lot I had at least half a dozen old RAM sticks laying around. Eventually I just tossed 'em all.

It doesn't even have one memory ( stick? I thought it was a sort of board ?) it has one 512 one and one 256 one. So even replacing the 256 one with 1G would vastly extend the memory available. I thought if I replaced one and it didnt help much then I would know a new computer would be in order..sort of a cheap check to see if that's the problem or if there is something darker at work. I'm hoping this is a reasonable course of action and it wont mess things up not to change both at once.

Helene, what I am getting are messages saying that I am low on virtual memory and windows is trying to do something about it. I deleted a bunch of stuff last night and then ran the disk storage cleanup , but that looks like it isn't going to help much except to get me through until I get more installed. If I can get that done today then I'll have a day or so to see if that helps before the Black Friday sales are over

I rteally appreciate all the help.

[blackshoe]

"Stick" is slang. Yeah, it's a circuit board. A small one.

Replace them both. Seriously. If your hard drive has at least 10 GB of free space, and you've defragged recently, so the space is contiguous, you shouldn't get those messages anymore after upgrading your RAM. If it still doesn't suit you, give the computer to your grandkids and buy a newer one.

[Free]

Adding extra RAM doesn't help much with old computers. Usually you even need to reinstall your OS to optimize the RAM usage! Older Windows versions use half of the RAM, whatever quantity of RAM you install. Installing 2GB means you'll have 1GB free memory...

Btw, which operating system do you use? Do you know some Linux freak who might be willing to install Linux to see if this is faster?

[Gerben42]

Given that Germany is close to KO in terms of net stability, I will look into the uninterruptable power supply also. Anyway, I am also considering a new computer and I'm eyeing with the iMac. For my TD stuff I already have an old laptop that simply works and will continue to work exactly for that function, but my home PC is just yawwwn...

I agree that Macs are not cheap (especially in Europe, what's up with that anyway?), but they are powerful and if you want something similar with everything included from Dell or whatever you are looking at €900 also so why not spend the extra €150 and have something nice.

[onoway]

Gerben42, on 2011-November-26, 03:38, said:

Given that Germany is close to KO in terms of net stability, I will look into the uninterruptable power supply also. Anyway, I am also considering a new computer and I'm eyeing with the iMac. For my TD stuff I already have an old laptop that simply works and will continue to work exactly for that function, but my home PC is just yawwwn...

I agree that Macs are not cheap (especially in Europe, what's up with that anyway?), but they are powerful and if you want something similar with everything included from Dell or whatever you are looking at €900 also so why not spend the extra €150 and have something nice.

If only the prices were that close! Looking up all the leads I could to various places, it turns out that I can get a new Toshiba or Asus laptop that will do anything I am likely to ask it to do for somewhere between $450-900 but even a refurbished Mac will cost me more than twice that. The thing is that I want a 17 inch screen and even the refurbished ones run around $2000 and up. No way I can justify spending that.

Found out that nobody in this neck of the woods has the memory thing ( computer is too old, they say). One place offered to sell me a board they thought MIGHT word for $60 and I could take it back if it didn't. Another quoted me $100 to bring one in but that's not even getting it installed. They also told me that I can only change one out anyway,the other is not removeable. They ALSO told me that the parts number I got from the analysis site was wrong. It all got sorta complicated and messy. It may well be that they were just trying to sell me a new one but for sure nobody is admitting to having the memory board I need.

So it's back to getting a new laptop after all, will just keep this one as a backup file, sorta, for the links that I want to keep.

Thank you all for your help and advice.

[kenberg]

A 17 inch entry in your comparison shopping endeavor:

http://configure.us....iron-17r-n7110

Quite possibly you can do better, but maybe not a whole lot better. I am not a great shopper, but I'm usually pretty fast.

My wife is the fastest shopper I have ever seen. She gets in and out of a store faster than I do. That's on the now rare occasions when she goes into one. I think she did half our Christmas shopping Thursday evening after the company left, and the other half this morning, all online.

Anyway, good luck with the new gadget.