About me

<p>EDIT  Feb 2017:   Still using the XPS410 with XP  described below .   Definitely NOT recommended by or for anyone.  But I use Firefox and Avast to hedge my bets - a little....</p> <p>Former semiconductor process engineer who hasn't figured out what she really wants to be when she grows up.</p> <p>Owner of exactly 1 Dell PC - XPS 410, E6300 Core 2 Duo, XP Media Center, 2 GB RAM (added 1GB to the original 2x512 but it's in SINGLE CHANNEL - OH, THE HORROR!), , Nvidia 7300LE Video (and yes, the "lousy edition" works just fine for my limited needs).    Backup PC's include a vintage 1999 Micron Millennium with Win98 (still working when retired in 2007) and a highly reliable spiral notebook and ball-point pen.  Still annoyed that  the fancy Pentium 90 PC I bought in 1994 for $2400 (complete with the infamous floating-point calculation bug) would be beaten into the dust today by a $50 cell phone , but at least the Labtec CS-600 speakers that came with it still work.</p> <p>Not a PC expert of any kind, just a plain old user who's allergic to formal tech support and prefers to figure things out on her own whenever possible.   Participate here to try and help with  whatever little I've learned from years of minor tinkering, and a lot of reading and research.   Yes, I admit it - I'm one of those weirdos who actually reads all the manuals from cover to cover.    And Google is, like, my BFF - except when you have to go 6 pages deep to find real information not co-opted by SEO blackhats, but that's another story.... The one thing I know for sure is that 90% of all problems have happened to someone else before - and if you're lucky, you'll find some generous soul who's posted somewhere on how to fix it, or at least pointed in the right direction.    Bless their hearts. </p> <p>EDIT:  Bless their hearts as in "THANK YOU!", not the passive-aggressive semantics.  I grew up in the south, but often missed the point.  Not the first time, nor the last.   </p> <p>I can only attempt to pay everyone's knowledge back by paying it forward.</p> <p>Of course, the more I learn, the less I know - but the journey is just as important as the destination.</p> <p></p> <p>______________________________________________________________________________________________________</p> <p>Personal favorite quotes:</p> <p>- True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.  (Socrates)</p> <p>- Sometimes free advice is worth exactly what you paid for it.   (Numerous sources)</p> <p>- If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.  (Dolly Parton)</p> <p>- Sometimes you're the windshield.  Sometimes you're the bug. (Dire Straits)</p> <p>- People can and will believe anything if their salary depends on it.  (paraphrased from Upton Sinclair)</p> <p>- Common sense is genius in overalls. (Walt Whitman)</p> <p>- Everybody likes to use technology, but nobody wants to understand it.  (My significant other - also an engineer).</p> <p>- Three rules of PC ownership:  Back up your data. Back up your data.   And back up your data. (Me). </p>