Well at least I think I am!

Many sleepless nights ago (about 9 to be honest) we finally accepted that the home computer really had died, and that much as I love my children, I did not want them hogging my laptop 24/7, so we set out on a venture to the brave new world of computer buying.

We have not been in this position for quite some time.  Aldi used to sell computers that did exactly what they said on the tin, and came with a whopping 3 year guarantee including a very helpful helpline, and having bought lots of computers from them in the past, when I needed a new laptop, I just waited until Aldi were selling them, and then trundled down to the store at 7am to queue outside with the other anxious computer shoppers, and run in and grab one before they all sold out at 9.01am

Our home computer started dying so we started looking up Aldi for special offers.

Our home computer not feeling very well

There weren’t any…. and it kept dying… more and more often!

Eventually, we realised we would have to shop elsewhere. We went to Tesco’s. They weren’t selling PC’s. Curry’s and Dixon’s and Comet had all closed. We had no choice… we had to go to PC World!

To cut a long story short, (as it is a VERY long story) I could have written a wonderful post for Rarasaur’s prompt ‘True Cost’ on the true cost of computers, but one of the costs was me… I was far too exhausted!

Initially when we looked in PC World we found some computers for £399 and thought… oh, we (I mean of course Peter, I have no money!) could manage that, and when we spoke to the sales assistant he persuaded us to consider stretching to £500 & I thought I could probably stretch Peter to £500, so we were feeling quite excited.

However

The sales child (I can’t call him a salesman, he was younger than my daughter) suggested that we go to their Guildford store as they have a much greater range of computers and a very knowledgeable manager, so we headed home to collect the girls & then headed out to Guildford.  First of all we couldn’t find the place, probably because we were all very cold & tired, because it turned out to be right beside the first place we looked.

The sales people indeed were very knowledgeable, but also told us that the ‘True Cost‘ of buying a Windows 8 machine was going to be.

Firstly I wasn’t going to be able to use my Office 2007 (professional) disks with it as Windows 8 is not compatible with anything older than Office 2010 and they recommend getting Office 2013.  But… you can’t buy one multi use copy of Office 2013 & use it on 5 machines any more. (Unless you want to pay an annual fee….. to Microsoft for a version you can install on 5 machines) No you have to buy one copy for each machine, so when my eldest goes off to uni in October we will have to buy another copy for her.  Secondly the professional version of office was going to be another £200.  I already paid for a multi-use copy of this a few years ago, I resent being blocked from using one of my 5 uses on a new machine.

Then, because Windows 8 is so different and complicated to use, they recommend a combined 3 year insurance policy plus after care service which will set up your machine & transfer any programs etc from your old computer to your new one

Then, there’s the problem that despite the computer coming with 1TB of storage, that quickly will be insufficient for a family of 4, especially with my photographs, do we need to buy storage in ‘the cloud’ for £150

Total cost for a really basic PC & Monitor (with a £50 trade in for our old PC)  £950

At this point I want to go home.  Did I mention it was my birthday?  We had been in computer shops for most of the day.

Having recovered from the shock, Peter said, well if we’re going to pay that much… why not go for a Mac??

The salesboy’s eyes lit up as he excitedly replied ‘great choice sir’ and steered Peter over to the beautiful shiny iMac stand.  I looked at the £1099 basic price tag & my heart dropped.  Once the saleschild had added on all the essential items we needed, the total came to £1517 (including a whopping £50 cashback for our old PC)

If you are going to be paying at least £1000 for a home computer, the iMacs do make more sense since they have true lasting in them, but I’ve never owned a mac before, and although they look beautiful, I was scared.  Also I didn’t like the fact that the new iMacs don’t have CD/DVD drives in them, or SD/XD slots, hence meaning that I couldn’t add my newly purchased CD’s to my music collection, or let the girls watch a DVD on the computer… and how would I upload my photos?

Well. According to the salesinfant I could BUY hardware to be able to load CD’s/DVD’s/Photos to the computer… but it all just seems like a money-grabbing scam to me, Windows 8 and the new iMacs, both trying to restrict their customers to purely their own Microsoft/Apple products, and instinctively I resist.

I dragged Peter out of the shop with the help of the girls & we went home to a delicious dinner cooked by the girls for me, with birthday candles in my broccoli!

Later that evening Peter had been looking on his iPad & showed me some second hand iMacs for sale on Gumtree (like Craigslist) for about £500.  I looked at the specifications and found that they still had CD/DVD drives & thought, well I’d prefer to learn how to use a mac on a £500 one rather than a £1500 one!

We found one for sale very near us & so rang the guy & went to see it that very night.  At this point I was exhausted beyond comprehension, but the idea of an iMac for £500 kept me going.  None of us know much about macs, but when we saw it it looked in good enough condition, so I thought well hopefully it will be ok.  I tried a few apps on it, and the DVD/CD drive, and the internet & it all seemed to work well & quickly, so I was really hoping it would be ok

By the time we brought it home it was nearly midnight so we left it in the box & went to bed!

That was April the 3rd.

Since then I have been learning how to use my shiny new toy.  It had 500GB of memory, not massive, but plenty to start off with.  I recently bought a 1TB hard drive just for my photos, so they weren’t going to be a problem.  I found all the music on our old computer & that was only 120GB so I set about transferring that over to the iMac, and then we tried to log into our iTunes accounts to download our purchases..

Except we (I) couldn’t work out how to authorise the computer… finally I worked that one out, and Peter signed in to upload his purchases, and he got the message ‘there is insufficient space on your hard drive’ !!

We don’t have that much music I thought.  I checked.  The system memory was indeed full; 499 out of 500GB in use!  What was using up all the space??

I eventually found out how to see what’s using up the space on my computer, and yes, it was completely full!  I had a look online and someone suggested downloading CleanGenius.app, which had a go at my files, but no matter what i asked it to check, it could only find 200GB of files (more like what I expected to be on my computer)

Finally I went on the Apple Support Communities & asked a question:

OCCCrashCatcher: Not enabling crash catching since we’re connected to a tty (and thus presumably in gdb)”

Anyway, I am very happy because I am officially superclever as I understand what I just did & my computer memory looks like this;

Lots of free memory 🙂

And… I know what type of computer I have!

It’s a Snow Leopard

Apologies everyone for my absence from the world (virtual and real!) for the last 10 days or so. Getting a Mac is a bit of a shock to the system!! Just to prove I’ve arrived, this post is from my brand new iMac with LOTS of memory space in it 🙂

During my absence I was popping over to David’s Blog to see how he has been doing, and the great news is that he’s been allowed home 🙂  Please keep visiting him too to check how he’s doing!