The Enid Blyton Society

Sorry, I thought everyone knew that!

Moonraker wrote:Sorry, I thought everyone knew that!

To be honest so did I- I nearly didn't post it in case I had missed something.

Well, I was busy the better part of this afternoon installing Windows 98 SE as a guest system in VMWare player. It looks good so far, graphics look fine, but sound and Shared folders are an issue.
I did find an alternative for the shared folders, I remembered having an old MP3-player with USB 1.1 compabilty (the amazing transferrate is less than an 1MB/s, but at least it works after finding the installation CD and installing the drivers). Let's see if I find a solution or an instruction to overcome the other challenges. At least the system works the way to do the things I intended to do with it, maybe my demands on it will rise in the future though...

Apropos of absolutely nothing, here's a bit of fun (and computer nostalgia) I just stumbled upon...

The Best Windows Start-up Sounds (Ranked from 10-0)

I do recognise most, if not all, of them... have to agree with their choice for number 1. (Ooh, I remember the excitement of getting that all-new system ourselves — and it was amazing at the time compared with our clunky old one.) Does anyone else have a favourite?

I must admit XP is my favourite - as, believe it or not, this was the first system we ever had.

We never did 'computer studies' at school, so I wasn't familiar with earlier Microsoft versions.

I like the 4000% slower version of Windows 95 at the end. It sounds very Zen. Or cosmic. Or something.

Rob Houghton wrote:I must admit XP is my favourite - as, believe it or not, this was the first system we ever had.

We never did 'computer studies' at school, so I wasn't familiar with earlier Microsoft versions.

Same here. I've only ever known Windows XP and Windows 8, and my version of Windows 8 doesn't even have a start-up sound.

I was familiar with the Windows XP and Windows Vista start-up sounds (and some of the others I'm pretty sure I must have heard somewhere), but the Windows 95 one, as I said, was the amazing this-is-the-future sound of our all-new computer in, well, 1995. We'd previously had a DOS computer with Windows 3.1 as an optional operating system, so Windows 95 was quite a jump ahead and it was genuinely exciting to see how advanced the software and graphics and so on were compared to the old one.

This was a couple of years before it became common for people to have an internet connection at home, so we weren't online at that stage, but it was still pretty cool nevertheless. I think it was another year or two before I ever saw anything on the internet — which was so incredibly slow and clunky back then that it almost wasn't worth wasting your time waiting for a page to download only to find it didn't have the info you wanted anyway!! How far we've come in only 20 years...

XP is my favourite. I started with 3.1!

I just tried to make a fairly important phone call, but my land line is very crackly and I couldn't hear the person I was trying to contact. It's a problem I've had in the past - usually caused by water getting into the junction box in the street. I know there's a way to test the line before reporting the problem to make sure it's a BT fault and not the phone. However I couldn't do that because I need to log-on. My husband deals with all the on-line bills etc., so he would have set the password up, and of course, he's at work and I don't have a clue what the password is.

As I need to make the call this morning, I tried ringing from my mobile instead - however there's no signal by the computer where I had looked up the number I needed, so I had to find pen and paper, write it down, and then stand in the hall by the front door to make the call - about the only spot in the house where I can get a mobile signal. A 5 minute call cost over £3!!!!!!! As I'm on pay as you go - that means I'll have to top up again much sooner that I would normally.

I hate technology.

The irony of this situation is, that I was trying to contact the training centre where I am studying a part-time computing course.

Yesterday afternoon I ordered a new battery for my laptop. Delivery was due in 3-5 days. It arrived this morning! Now (I hope) to get more than approx 20 minutes before, my rather ancient computer shuts down.
Update: 3hours and 5 mins remaining 87 % capacity- though it may take a while for the computer to "get used" to the new battery.

On my laptop there is a setting to stop the charging when the battery gets to 80%. Apparently this lengthens the life of the battery. Obviously you have bit less in the tank to start off with when you unplug the power, but seems to pay off in the long run. Mine doesn't have a big capacity anyway but can still go for a few hours, depending on what I am doing.

That is interesting, Lenoir. I imagine though that my 2010 Windows 7 computer will have died before this battery...But I thank you for the information.

Some cellphones have that setting too, and I really need it because I ALWAYS overcharge my phone.

Battery Doctor is an app I use for charging my phone. When it reaches near-charge, it just trickle charges.