Good to be back.

The Seizure Jig has gotten the better of me lately.

So I've been fixing other people's computers and buying computers for other folks. Not sure how I wound up doing so, but it has been both rewarding and immensely frustrating at one and the same time. One I did for a friend of ours was well worth any trouble - they're good folks who run their own business and have two little ones. Buying a new computer was not really high on the spending priority list, so they asked me to look at it, and I told them I could make it run in stable fashion by wiping it clean and installing Win2000pro. Endless pop ups, redirects, and freezes were plaguing this thing, making it unusable.

It worked, at least at my place while undergoing testing - I don't know if they have set it up yet.

A computer at my wife's workplace needed replacing and they had gotten some quotes in the $600-$700 range, high for what they need to do. The box being replaced was an overbuilt monster IBM P-III 400mHz which weighed an even ton. I surfed on over to MWave.com, where computer parts abound, and they'll build and test it the way you like it served. I configured and bought my own machine from them, and they did an excellent job. This was a fun task - assembling a computer on someone else's dime and knowing it would be a solid, reliable box for years to come.

Also at her workplace is an HP Pavilion 6630, an all-in-one discount special, based on an Intel Celeron 500mHz processor, and everything else planted on the motherboard. Unfortunately, that old adage about getting what you paid for applies to this pathetic little wimpy ass computer. Slow, slow, slow, and now it appears the on board graphics are failing. It is alleged that using an old PCI video card will interrupt the on board graphics system, replacing it.

Uh, yeah.

I did pretty much all I could, but the PC card would freeze at the startup screen even though the computer continued to boot normally. Very weird, and likely cannot be fixed without getting down to component level on the motherboard, and paying a tech to do that would buy a nice Athlon - based box.

Guess I'll be buying another computer...