Fast Computers

When we first moved here we had dial up internet. We had that for a few years because first there wasn't any good high speed in this rural place, then you had to sign a 3 year contract or pay a penalty. At the time I was thinking we wouldn't be here for another 3 years. When we finally went ahead and signed the contract and began using high speed, it was so fast! We didn't know how we had ever used that slow dial up. I really noticed it when I read blogs-there were some blogs that I had only read once because it took so long to open them. We had the slowest high speed internet because it was the cheapest and we really thought it was fast! I felt bad for all the hours we had wasted waiting on slow internet. We stayed longer than the 3 year contract so we made the right decision there.

Our desk top was 8 years old and we had some problems the last year. 5 years ago we had to crash the whole computer and start over with the photos and random other things we had backed up. We didn't lose anything important, but it was a pain to start over. We had problems with a fan in the computer and had no computer for 18 days over Christmas 2009. This is a huge problem when you live in a rural place in the winter. Even after the fan was fixed we had it in the shop to fix it again last year. There was plenty of space on the computer but it was slower and slower. Sometimes it would freeze up and the only thing to do was shut down and start over. We ran virus programs, took it into the shop to see if it had a virus, had Ram's dad look at it, etc. We came to the conclusion that it was just old.

Recently we got a new computer. That will be a whole different post. We've had it set up for a few days. Because our computer was so slow it used to take me about an hour each morning to read and respond to e-mail and read/comment on my favorite blogs. This morning it took less than 5 minutes! I feel bad about all the hours I wasted on the slow computer.

Ram is going to take our old computer in his office to write sermons etc. He'll be frustrated waiting for that computer, but he will be glad to get rid of the really old computer that was in his office. The difference will be that I will rarely use the computer in his office now. After regularly using the new computer he won't have much patience for his computer. Perhaps we'll have to replace his computer too. He's very tempted to get an iPad...

NOTE: Because we live in a rural place some things are different when shopping for a computer-very few places have wi-fi besides the library, our churches don't even have a phone at them much less an internet connection, most cell phones don't work in our town/area, etc. Ram doesn't do very much traveling outside of the local area so it doesn't make much sense to get a laptop or smartphone. Shopping for a computer would be very different if we lived in a city.