Adventures in PC Frustation Land
Posted on | March 10, 2005 at 6:18 pm | 2 Comments
I’m back. Got the new PC working and everything I need (hopefully) transferred over from the old one. I actually ended up bringing the first one back to Best Buy – they said the DVD drive was definitely dead and gave me a whole new machine, which was nice. I’ve been very slow, careful, and methodical installing things on this one, and I think it’s paid off. Still, I did have some problems here and there, but because of my knowledge of PCs, I was able to work through them. It really makes me wonder how people who don’t live and breathe this stuff survive. Heck, this was an off-the-shelf product, all components by the same manufacturer and with lots of stuff pre-installed, and yet I still had to do some tricks to get it working right. I can really, really understand the desire to switch to Macs, if they really are as easy and troublefree to setup and use for the “normal” folk as they’re supposed to be.
So, anyway, I’ve got everything installed and running and it seems to be pretty fast. I haven’t really tested everything though. The only remaining problem I have is that something in the audio chain is making some loud noises when I shutdown or start the PC. I suspect the Tascam US-122 USB audio/MIDI interface, especially since I installed the drivers twice in order to try to correct a problem that I actually ended up fixing in the end by tweaking a parameter. Although I don’t think the noises really started until I installed Cakewalk’s Sonar XL 2.2 (I still haven’t upgraded to Sonar 4). But oh well, it doesn’t seem to be having a problem at other times and can play regular audio and my Sonar songs just fine. I suppose I’ll have to see pretty soon if it can record okay, so I can get around to finishing those songs I started during National Solo Album Month. I read in some forums that the Tascam has problems with XP Service Pack 2, which worries me, since this machine came pre-installed with that. My noise problem could just be some conflict with the built-in audio card though.
Last night was the season premiere of South Park. I have to say that the first few minutes of the episode made me somewhat physically ill. “Good” to see that Parker & Stone are going to keep pushing the boundaries…
Latre.
Comments
2 Responses to “Adventures in PC Frustation Land”
March 11th, 2005 @ 10:06 pm
macs rock….they are literally “plug and play” as they say……heck it took me 5 minutes to open the box…plug in the back cord…plug in the keyboard and phone cord…enter the internet crap…and im cruising the highway, playing with GARAGE BAND programs,,,scanning photos, making a slideshow, downloading my CDs to my Ishuffle, ………..
i feel for ya!!!!
March 12th, 2005 @ 11:10 am
You’ve got an iShuffle, Patty? Cool. Though I admire the concept, I’ll probably never get one. I will give my reason in a future entry…