Windows and PC Skills

I am swapping primary PCs from a load functional 5-year old model to a new PC. The new one is 4x faster. That hardly matters since I can’t type, watch movies or surf the web any faster then my current speeds. The motivation for change is to have a quiet PC. Apparently cleaning the fan or putting in a new fan is not one of the possible solutions, plus I already had the new PC for some time.

I got my first computer in the Fall of 1982 when I lived in Honolulu. It was a Commodore VIC 20 and I played chess on it using my tv for a monitor. My parents bought me a $4000 dual 5.25” floppy drive IBM color PC in 1984 when I was in my sophomore year of Chemical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. The next few years were a unique time in history when having a PC was a huge technological advantage as a student when it came to doing programming homework, crunching lab data in a spreadsheet and writing reports.

I have had the exterior case for the old PC since 2001 having upgraded the guts many times over the years. It served me through getting two premium Microsoft certifications, MCSE and MCDBA, along with an AA in Database Administration. I have installed MS Windows (NT4, 2000, XP and 7) well over 100 times back in the day. The old PC will continue to work for my roommate Michelle to watch movies on in her room.

I am grateful to my parents, sister and her husband Lee for getting me setup with my first PC; my PC/Windows skills; the miracle of the internet/web; having the skills to setup Windows and transfer files; and for having the resources to have a new PC pretty much just lying around waiting to be used. That is a LOT to be grateful for.