Withdrawal symptoms.

[Margaid]

I've really struggled with withdrawal symptoms - not forum since Thursday! I was just about to start cooking breakfast when there was a flah of lightning followed immediately by a clap of thunder and the lights going out. The lights came back on almost immediately, but before I could unplug anything there was an immediate repeat. This time the lights didn't come back on. I could see across the fields that "next door" had lights on , but they have a generator. Then I realised that OH's workshop lights were on, so that meant it was just the caravan. Burrowing to the back of his wardrobe I found the trip switch and switched it back on.

Lights! music !(well the Today programme), but after a few minutes, NO COMPUTER!!!! Turned out that the lightning took out the power supply, ethernet interface and wireless interface on my ancient laptop and the wireless router. So no internet access on site. As OH never throws anything away, he found the three routers that we had discarded and eventually got one of them working, but we have a new one on order.

At least it means he had to finishing rebuilding another laptop for me - now I just need to work out how to get my stored emails off the other computer and on to this!

 

[Marigold]

Yes it's a terrible culture shock, isn't it, when one is offline, especially if you know it's there really. When I was in hospital recently I had my phone but they don't tell you the Internet code, so I couldn't download anything new, except the Forum, on Tapatalk, which comes down the phone line!
How did we manage without the Internet? Even five years ago, I didn't really use it. Now, apart from the forums I read, all the shopping I order, and my seller account on Amazon (profitably getting rid of OH's surplus books and CDs to make room for more) there are the friends I write to much more often than I would if I didn't have email or texting. Our family is in constant touch on Photostream, sharing pictures and silly comments, and at least in hospital I had my downloads from Kindle and iBooks, not that I could concentrate much at the time. I'm just so glad to have got on board with all this whilst in still young enough to keep up with the grandchildren!
I hope your newly built laptop is with you soon, Margaid, with all its memory restored. That's about the only thing my little new iPad mini won't do for me - if there is a memory restoration app along one day, I hope I remember to download it before its too late!

 

[chrismahon]

We had no internet for 6 weeks and it was terrible Margaid. Have had no TV since we moved -5 months. Finally got the 50 metre lead sorted to set up the dish to get a sight line over the surrounding trees, only to discover we were 5 metres too low and still went through the trees. So no TV until we move -probably two more years! We're not spending money on a mast.

Have you got it plugged into a surge arrestor socket?

 

[Margaid]

We don't have TV Chris - OH is a telly addict so it's best not to have one. I'm using the "new" laptop but haven't had a chance to transfer any data over. To add to my complications I'm now using Windows 7 instead of XP, Thunderbird instead of Outlook Express and Open Office instead of Word. Add to that the keyboard is slightly different so I keep getting \ when I want the shift key! New router arrived today, so we only have to work out the password for BT internet and OH will be reliably back on line. The caravan is ethernet as the wireless signal wasn't very good inside a metal box!

We'd need surge arrestors on the BT line and all the other connections so it probably isn't worth it. We once had a client (part of the MOD) whose computer hall was supposed to be lightning proof but it still got taken out from time to time.

 

[chrismahon]

BT sends shudders down my spine. They couldn't have messed things up any more if they tried with our internet connection. We have had the telephone line disconnected now -had enough. Yesterday both my email addresses stopped working and we are paying to retain them!! The passwords have been altered.

Try changing from Microsoft to Mac if you want to experience confusion Margaid. Far better though and no need for antivirus.

 

[Icemaiden]

Windows 7 sends shivers down my spine... :evil:
Got it on my laptop at home & can never find anything, & the simplest keyboard shortcuts from XP no longer work. I've got a folder of music called "chicken photos" which I can't rename, & all of my spreadsheets disappear into a black hole. Give me back DOS 3.1 any day!!

Good luck Margaid; you have my complete sympathy. Thank heavens hens are simpler!

 

[Margaid]

I started out with CP/M 80, using Wordstar as the word processing. it wouldn't do all the fancy stuff Word etc do, but for simple stuff and easy to produce layouts it was fantastic. We are thinking long term of going over to Mac because we're fed up with Microsoft but that will probably be after the building work is finished. We're fortunate no to have had any problems with BT but know of lots of people who have. One of my worst problems is this keyboard layout is slightly different and when I want to press shift for upper case, this is what \i get instead!

 

[EddieS]

.Try changing from Microsoft to Mac if you want to experience confusion Margaid. Far better though and no need for antivirus.

Wrong, if you have any add-ons, Adobe Reader, Flash, Java etc. you are open to virus infection. Trojans through your browser.
Apple have had to back down and admit their system is vulnerable after thousands of machines
were infected.
Icemaiden, do you get a message when you try to rename the folder?