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HOW DO THEY DO IT SO FAST?

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It’s configuration central here and has been for a couple of days, though I hope to actual finish today and be able to move on to those other things awaiting my attention. I can hear the little voices of my undone tasks yapping in my ear. It’s like the whine of mosquitoes. I slap at them, but they keep coming back.

It’s not only the computer that is sucking up my time. It’s this stupid, horrible election. So much of my attention has been taken away from the stuff I really should be doing, I’m not getting stuff done, not like I need to. I can’t WAIT for this election to be done and over. I want my brain back.

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Meanwhile, I got my computer. I actually got it a week ago and it was not supposed to show up until the second week in November. Maybe they ought to have waited and sent everything at the same time, but as it is, it didn’t come with the software I ordered — or the peripherals I need. I ordered the computer and software from Dell. Yes, I know. The worst customer service on the planet … but some of the best computers. It’s like having your sister marry a man you really loathe, but they are a package deal.

One of the big changes in this new generation of computers is they mostly don’t come with DVD reader/writers, so you need an external if you are going to install software from physical media. I ordered the external DVD player/writer from Amazon. It’s the same one Dell sells, but $25 less with free shipping and 2-day turnaround. Also picked up a nice zippy 1 TB external drive and a cool mouse that scrolls side-to-side as well as up-and-down. Amazing how prices have dropped on some of this stuff.

Yesterday, the peripherals arrived, so today, I hunkered down and decided to make this computer function.

I installed Photoshop and Bridge. I finished moving files from backup hard drives to the new computer (which has two hard drives, a 1 TB 7200 rpm mechanical drive, plus a 256 GB solid state drive. Everything defaults to the C: drive — which is the 256 GB SSD — so I had to do some configuring. Not going to let that huge, D: drive sit idly by. I put all the photographs and documents there — and the Adobe stuff. I’ll leave the SSD for booting and other applications. Like OpenOffice and Audible Manager.

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All things considered, this has gone well. Smoothly. Photoshop and Bridge installed without so much as a whimper of protest, as did all the Topaz and NIK filters. The DVD external worked fine. The back up drives passed the data to this computer without a problem as fast as their little virtual brains could do it.

Nonetheless, it took a long time and I’m not done yet.

It reminded me of watching (I think it was ) NCIS the other night. Some fiend was copying a gazillion terabytes of data to destroy American via the Internet. Not only was this evil genius able to hack the U.S. government’s most secret servers (which I don’t find hard to believe), but they could transfer this massive amount of data in a mere few minutes. Wow. That I can’t believe.

With my brand new 3.0 USB Western Digital external drive hooked up to my not-all-that slow older Alienware computer (it’s got a core Intel i7 board in it), I’ve been backing up the documents library. It contains 177 GB of data and about 55,000 files. The file count includes a lot of hidden, system files, illustrations inside books and so on. Many of them are tiny. Nonetheless, this transfer from a fast computer to the latest greatest external hard drive has already taken more than an hour and looks very likely to take one more.

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How do they do it so FAST on television? They can transfer the contents of an entire super computer to a flash drive in less than a minute. And where did they get that flash drive? None of mine work that well. I’ve never seen one even close to that large or fast … and NEVER an error message. Nary a glitch. Amazing!

I’m SO envious! While I’m envying fictional TV crime series technology, can I (please, pretty please) have that battery that will run my laptop for a week without having to plug it in? Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for the backup on the other computer to finish. Maybe tomorrow?

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Categories: #Photography, Anecdote, Computers, Humor, Software, Technology, Television

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29 replies

  1. evilsquirrel13
    10/23/2016 • 09:55

    Geez, I’ve had this computer for seven years now… so it’s been seven years since I last had to set up a new computer. When the time comes, it’s gonna be a whole ‘nother experience for me, I guess….

    Like

  2. Taswegian1957
    10/23/2016 • 08:16

    It’s a lot less stressful setting up a new computer before the old one dies. I was able to do that this time too as I retired my old laptop before it actually died. It was a very old laptop, it ran XP. Strangely SF technology seems a lot less reliable than that used by TV law enforcement agencies. Have you noticed how often the technology on the Enterprise breaks down? Or Voyager? They probably really miss customer service out there in the Delta Quadrant but everything is always fixed with seconds to spare.

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    • Marilyn Armstrong
      10/23/2016 • 13:48

      Me too. This was the first time I had the leisure to do it right rather than fast. And since the other is still working, if i decide I want to redo stuff on this one, I can … and still can connect using the other. I think it will be in semi-retirement. I may use it for traveling since I’d rather not get this one all banged up — and I don’t actually have a case into which it fits … and everything I like is more than I want to spend right now.

      About the Enterprise (all versions of it!) they have one engineer. JUST one. But he’s really good at making the ship keep going when they are running out of time (on the show because an hour show is actually only 42 minutes). I always thought they should plan better, but countdowns to disaster (or disaster averted) were the beating heart of these shows.

      “Scottie, we’ve only got 19 seconds.”
      “I’m working on it Captain.”
      “Work faster. The sponsors are complaining.”

      Liked by 1 person

  3. angloswiss
    10/23/2016 • 02:33

    Congratulations on the new computer. It seems to be the main excitement we now have in our golden oldie lives. I once had photoshop, but no longer. I have Ribbit online which has the features of Photoshop incorporated which I would use, but I no longer alter my photos so much. Mr. Swiss and I now have the same notebooks from Asus Aspire V17 Nitro Black Edition and are happy with them. I have had mine for about a year now and he got his last week. I noticed your background is blue illumination, ours is red which Mr. Swiss is not so happy about. I mainly use my Win machine for photos and have two external disks as a backup, one with 2 Terabyte and the other with 1. Many ways lead to Rome, but the main thing is it works. We both also have an apple, although I have the bigger and better one 🙂

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    • Marilyn Armstrong
      10/23/2016 • 12:21

      This one, you can configure the colors to any other color, or all different colors at the same time. My last computer also can do that and I played around with it a bit at the beginning, but eventually, it doesn’t really matter as long as it isn’t too garish.

      The V17 was one of the computers I seriously considered. In the end, I had bunch of discounts on this one and it had JUST been released, AND I bought it as a business user which save me more then $200. I do not know why the same computers — identical — are cheaper if bought through the business section, but they are. Anyway, it turned that all the computers I was interested in were around the same price except for the Macs which were about $400 more.

      I think I love this machine. It’s incredibly fast. Boots in 8 seconds flat and that includes however long it takes me to push the “on” button.

      I was thinking about buying such an expensive (NICE) computer and realized, it really IS the only luxury left in my world. We don’t have fancy cars or take expensive vacations. We very rarely go out for dinner. We don’t buy clothing except to replace stuff that no longer fits or has worn out. So I figure at least a great computer. It’s my primary form of entertainment and it’s the center of my life.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. draliman
    10/23/2016 • 01:24

    I quite enjoy setting up a new computer! Getting it all up and running. Exciting times!

    Like

    • Marilyn Armstrong
      10/23/2016 • 01:38

      I enjoyed it this time because I didn’t wait until my older computer died. It’s nice to be able to take my time and get it the way I want it. It’s different from Win7 and I’ve had to finally abandon tree structure for my files. It’s all object linking and pointers.

      Liked by 1 person

  5. Martha Kennedy
    10/22/2016 • 18:21

    I voted. It’s over for me. 🙂

    Like

  6. swo8
    10/22/2016 • 16:30

    Sounds exciting, Marilyn. A week without having to plug it in – is that possible? (on TV yes but in real life?)
    Leslie

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  7. Ben
    10/22/2016 • 16:03

    It’s the movies and that fast transfer is just another special effect. After all there are time constraints to any given TV show or movie. If they had to operate in real time the transfer would last the length of the movie so that segment is speeded up when the scene is on camera.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Marilyn Armstrong
      10/22/2016 • 16:48

      Except it always makes me laugh when the hero/ine has just 1 minute to transfer the data … to a flash drive (and we know how fast they are NOT) … and they get it done. Cool. I want one of them. And the battery that never dies. And maybe a gun that never needs reloading (of course, that’s always possible if you never actually shoot anything).

      Like

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