MY NEW COMPUTER

I GOT IT!! I FINALLY bought a new computer!!! Went out on Christmas Eve, to one of those conglomerate stores..the kind that sadly, this country is now mostly made up of, and searched for my NEW, STATE OF THE ART, CDROM, DVDRW, 17" FLAT SCREEN MONITOR, BLAH, BLAH BLAH computer. (Gee, I sound like Ralphy from the "Christmas Story", wanting his "RED RIDER, DOUBLE ACTION AIR RIFLE, WITH THE COMPASS AND A THING THAT TELLS TIME BUILT RIGHT INTO THE STOCK").

Well, lo and behold I found it! Yes! The salesman showed me the perfect computer...a "MUST HAVE" as he said. Of course this "must have" meant HIGH PRICE. But I thought, hell, this is my first computer since the one I bought in 1996, so I want all the bells and whistles, which I was assured it has.

Now, for those with no heart or sympathy, begin the laughter here....well heck, if you DO have heart and sympathy, begin the laughter here, heaven knows I've gotten it on the internet boards I belong too while whining away about the new computer.

For you see.....Joe (the person I co-habitate with) and I did not open the computer up on Christmas eve! No, we were going out for dinner and a gift exchange with friends. (yes, I do have friends...some..a few...but that is for another blog) :)

ANYHOW, I digress. This morning as I was playing with my digital camera, Joe walks out to where I'm at to say, "guess what"? and continues with the fact that our new computer he is trying to hook up, has no apparent diskette drive (or 3x5 floppy drive, whatever they are called). I say, "WHAT????" We go and look and look...nothing, nada, zero.

Joe first calls Gateway, and upon getting a person, explains the situation. He learns very quickly that this person apparently didn't know what a "floppy" is (have I given away my, let's just say, "old technology" knowledge?). He then calls the Geek Squad, and is informed that computers no longer have diskette drives in them.

So all installation has now, as of this writing, stopped. We are now awaiting the 8 a.m. opening tomorrow of Best Buy, to go in, explain our issue and hope that they sell an external diskette that will work with our new STATE OF THE ART computer.

What frustrates this writer (I use the term loosely) is that it is not just that I have so many items on dozens of diskettes (I have the old computer to open them if it comes to that), but having lacked the CDROM RW blah blah blah on my old computer, I thus saved my "favorite places" onto diskette, to load onto my NEW computer, which has NO PLACE TO PUT THE DISKETTE!!!

Now if I had a few "favorite places", this would be no big deal. But we are talking about ROWS of "favorite", must have, "places" that have been adding in volumn since 1996.

So alas, while I did plug in the new flat screen monitor (it is taking some getting use too I might add), I am back on my old computer....awaiting the fates tomorrow to find out how I can "advance into the 21st century".

Wish me luck!