In preparation of our trip to Walt Disney World next week, I have been busy getting my laptop ready to go. I have added an external USB hard drive since it was the easiest way to update the laptop without pulling it apart and having to reinstall all of the software. The main issue I have has been the compatibility of the laptop (4 years old running Windows 98) and new technology. I also got a USB 2.0 PC Card to upgrade the laptop so that I could transfer files that much faster to the hard drive. It turns out that it only is supported by 98 Second Edition. I briefly flirted with installing Windows 2000 on the laptop, but Cooper convinced me that it was a driver nightmare.
The biggest scare happened yesterday when I tried to check the hard drive by plugging it into the internal USB port on the laptop. Once I started to plug it in, the laptop died. I spent many hours trying to figure out how I was going to buy a new laptop fearing that through some major static discharge, I managed to fry the motherboard. I even found a Dell refurbished 2Ghz laptop for less than $800. Just as mysteriously as it had happened, this morning the laptop booted up just fine. I am now scared to turn it off until I go on the trip.
Why all this upgrading? Serious memory issues. My laptop only has 3GB (a lot in 1999) of Hard Drive space. So my new external is 80GB which means I could fit the contents of all of the hard drives of all of the computers I have ever owned onto it. Pretty darn impressive. I have decided to rip all of the CDs I own and fill up half of the drive so that I have a music collection ready to go whenever I travel. The other half will be for the massive photo sizes from the new digital camera. I had figured that I had about 2-512MB memory cards of storage (about 400 photos) on the existing HD and considering I took 600 photos in Europe, I knew that I wanted to be able to take as many as possible while in Florida (and New York in December).
One work note: I snuck a shift at the Matterhorn in yesterday – it was good to be back!