Wednesday, October 01, 2008

More Reliable Miscellanies Ahead

Has anyone noticed how infrequent my Morning Medieval Miscellanies have become? The problem is my work computer, which has been growing more and more obsolete by the day. For whatever reason, our IT won't upgrade computers; it seems to have more of a "wring all the use out of 'em, then ditch 'em" philosophy.

The problem is that my work computer can handle three windows at a time max before becoming hopelessly slow and freezing up. It's even worse if those windows have any sort of animations running on them, or if they use something like Wordpress Snapshots (which really kills my computer). Doing the Miscellany, though, requires at least three windows open at a time: Blogger, Google Reader, and whatever page I'm referencing. Since by its very nature the Miscellany often sends me to pages I've never been to before, I sometimes don't know if clicking a link is going to make me crash. That's meant I've had to do all my Miscellanies from home, when I can wrest the computer from the other three people who use it.

Today, though, begins the new fiscal year, meaning I can request a new computer at work -- and I did so at 12:20 AM. New computer ahead! New Miscellanies ahead! New a-third-thing-I-can't-think-of-but-would-be-nice-for-balance ahead!

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:46 PM

    Which browser are you using?
    IE7 has tabbed browsing, which would allow you to have everything except (possibly) Google Reader open under one window.
    The same applies to Firefox and Opera, but for some reason I can only comment on Blogger when using IE. I think, however, this might be an ISP thing and not a Firefox thing.
    And this helps make life easier even with brand new computers.

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  2. Anonymous6:24 AM

    Another thing that might help: there is a really useful add-on for Firefox called Flashblock, which switches off all Flash animations until such time as you actually click on them. You can set certain sites as exceptions, but all in all it's made my web a much quicker place to load, and may deal with your machine's dislike of animations. If you're using Firefox, anyway...

    I do wonder whether the Snap facility on Wordpress is any use to anyone. It annoys the bejasus out of me, as owner of a Wordpress blog, and I believe it's configurable. I shall poll the readership.

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  3. Yeah, what they said, other than to mention that Firefox also has tabbed browsing, so you don't have to have three windows open, plus that handy flash block.

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  4. Anonymous5:30 PM

    If the computer is fine, ther than the browsers, look and see if any sneaky program has imported an additional toolbar onto your browser? Google Toolbar etc give older computers fits. Disabling them via Menu Bar View--Toolbars-->click to remove checks next to useless toolbars (FF; IE is Tools--Toolbars--> click etc) works often miraculously revives the older computer.

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