Well, just my luck, the hard drive I thought I’d resurrected started dying again. This time I cut off life support: unplugged it from the machine. I just couldn’t bare to see my data go on suffering like that.
As it turns out, it was a snip to go out and find a new drive – one that was cheaper, three times as big, and faster. Such is the world of computing.
You’d hardly know I was using the same computer that I bought four years ago – just before Windows 95 was released. Just about all of its guts have been replaced. New mouse, new CDROM, new memory, new motherboard, new video card… the keyboard and the monitor are the originals, though quite frankly I’ve been eyeing up those nice 17 inch monitors in the shops. This old 14 inch doesn’t quite cut it. Not that size is everything. But it helps.
So for probably the fourth time this year, I’ve been merrily installing Windows and all my applications again. The sad thing is that when you’re halfway through the Windows 95 installation, it reboots the machine and puts up an animated prompt that says, with no hint of irony: "Preparing to run Windows 95 for the first time…"
