And it all has to do with computers.

It seems every four years or so we have to replace our computer. Motherboard always fails, and despite the fact we always say we’ll just put in a new motherboard, invariably it seems it will be easier to just upgrade the entire system and purchase new. As we all like to quip: electronics are obsolete the moment they hit the marketplace.

So this go around, after agonizing whether we should go Mac or not, we purchased an all-singing all-dancing refurbished HP from Future Shop which came loaded with Vista. Got it for a real bargain. Or so we thought. And thought the negative hype around Vista was mostly clever marketing on Apple’s part. Surely this was just a learning curve.

The new computer arrived April 17. We opted not to purchase a new monitor because we’d recently acquired a great 22″ Acer LCD. That was going to mean a bit of fiddling when I would transfer data, but I figured I could do that by transferring data from the old computer to a Toshiba laptop, disassemble the old computer, assemble new computer, and then transfer data from the Toshiba to the new computer.

Sounds easy.

After farting around for three days with what were supposed to be the correct cables, and installing allegedly correct software, having the transfer hang on me for hours and hours, searching Microsoft’s website and others, I found a wee article that said I needed serial port cables instead of USB. You would think a cable is a cable is a cable. Apparently not. So Gary went into TigerDirect and purchased no, not serial cables, but USB for data transfer between XP machines (not the XP to Vista that I had) on the advice of a knowledgeable tech there.

I was skeptical, in fact a bit ticked. Set up the Toshiba laptop for data transfer from the old computer with correct cables, only to have the Toshiba up and fry on me! Dead. Won’t finish booting! AAAHHHH!

Right, I go and hijack Kelly’s (our daughter) Dell Vista-based laptop, connect cables, fire up transfer programs and transfer data from old computer to laptop without a hiccough. Gorgeous. I begin to feel a little better.

Disassembled old computer and hooked up new computer. So many wires for TV and audio and ooph. Got things configured correctly pretty much on first go, fired her up and all looked very good. I foolishly begin to think maybe the worst is over.

Then I hook up the Dell laptop to the new computer, fire up program, set what I want to transfer, only to be told by the program that there isn’t enough memory on the new computer (almost a terabyte on the main C drive) to transfer a mere 23G of data. You have got to be kidding me! After several days researching this, I discovered that the F drive on this new beast is like a buffer drive to receive data, and it then feeds to C. Has something to do with making streaming seamless. And of course the F drive has about 2G available, and there’s no way to change the parameters of how a download feeds.

So in a fit of desperation I decided to do the transfer not the recommended way (all or nothing) but in chunks, and that worked a treat. Needless to say I felt enormously relieved when all my data appeared on the new computer! Novels and spread sheets and financial data, our entire music library (huge!), pics, in short, our lives.

After that came all the software nightmares.

I’m normally quite a patient person, and I think somewhat computer literate. But this developed into a major saga worthy of major motion picture. My blood pressure launched into the stratosphere, and the froth dripped from my jaws.

Just dropped another almost $200 to upgrade bloody Outlook from my Office XP suite to 2007, because after checking email at 7:00 a.m. the system decided at noon that suddenly XP wasn’t good enough for it, and no end of attempting to solve the problem did any good but make the Microsoft gods rub their hands in glee. Then went to install the stupid software and couldn’t get into the stupid case! I mean who do they make these things for? I ended up calling Gary up to the loft in frustration and he ended up frothing as well. After about 10 minutes he figured it out after many threats of broken windows and thunder from above.

When I went to install the software an error occurred. Bloody wonderful. So tried again. Same thing. So tried to uninstall the old XP Office, but system said the installer wasn’t available. Not available? Oh fergawdsakes! Do I have to make an appointment? Then I happened to notice under the Start menu a little exclamation beside the Shutdown icon, which said there were updates that would only be installed when the computer shut down. Well nice of the system to inform me of this. So fine, shut down, updates installed (these things seem to happen at five minute intervals with this ridiculous new system), and then fired up again. Thought, oh, what the hell, try the new software one more time, all the time thinking if this doesn’t work that’s it, the blasted black box is going back to Future Shop, all-singing-all-dancing notwithstanding, and I’m going to have a small freak-out and demand money back or replacement and all my data transferred and set up at no extra charge, given I’ve now shelled out about an additional $400 in cables and gizmos to get this thing anywhere close to operational.

My subliminal message must have transferred to the infernal beast, because Outlook 2007 loaded, all my data transferred from the old Outlook, and I was able to download about 300 messages waiting from the past two days.

Lordy, lordy, does it really have to be this hard?

And it is important to realize that I had to have Outlook, because I’d built an entire data base of media contacts, customers, email lists, etc, not to mention all the registrations for this program or that website, crucial correspondence from agents, editors, contacts at Chapters. To loose that would have been disastrous.

So, problem #Idon’tremember solved. AVG, ShopFactory and QuickBooks to solve next. AVG says my registration number is invalid, so I have a support query into them. That problem as of this morning has still to be resolved and I’m running on a 30-day free download for the nonce.

ShopFactory told me the same — registration number invalid. I had a cryptic message back from ShopFactory support, followed their suggestion and thankfully that software is now operational, also a crucial matter as our entire secure, shopping cart on our website is built with ShopFactory. Took me days to build that website.

And QuickBooks, well, 2002 isn’t compatible with Vista. I was supposed to download a trial of 2007, import all my data (five years worth!) into 2007, install the new copy of 2008 (thankfully free because of my sister-in-law who works for Merisel and was given a free copy from her sales rep) and then import from 2007 to 2008. Oh, but oops, guess what? My original data is in multiple currency (we did a lot of importing from the US), and 2007 won’t support multiple currency. Called Intuit and oh so sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. You’d have to purchase 2007 and 2008 in multiple currency at around $500 a pop. Gee. Thanks.

So I’ve lost five years worth of data, a huge customer information base, etc. I have at least annual financial statements and hard copies of invoices and purchases, so if Canada Revenue decides to audit again (Please the gods no! We’ve already had four!) I have data. And it now means I have to rebuild from January 1, 2008 to present so I can at least start up QuickBooks again.

Oh, and that Outlook problem? It has opened another can of worms in that there is a ticking time-bomb waiting for me with my old Office XP suite. I’m told that eventually it will all fail under Vista. Great. Novels, short stories, spreadsheets and data bases years in the making all just waiting to go poof.

So I’m working with a 90 trial of one of the Office 2007 suites hoping that will buy me time before I have to shell out yet more funds on another software upgrade because some group of eejits at Microsoft decided to fix a perfectly functional operating system.

Breathe, Lorina, in, out, slowly. I’m dreaming of sledge hammers these days.

Did I mention we’re thinking of purchasing a laptop so I can work anywhere in the house or the garden? You can bet we’re going to seriously look at going back to Mac for that. At least it would be a relatively safe way of testing the waters.