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This is a book about maintaining the single most complex, unfathomable, and overhyped
appliance you will ever own. Upgrading and maintaining your computer is a
difficult and bewildering task, and yet you are the most qualified person to handle it.
The main reason is because you are perhaps the only person you can trust entirely to
do the job right.
You are an intelligent, mature adult. You can balance a budget, which is more than I
can say for most organized governments. You can plan the annual week-long sales
convention. You can get the copier to collate and even to staple, on one side, so that
the other side opens up. Yet there’s something about a computer that just makes you
feel foolish.
You feel foolish when the darned thing freezes up and you can’t get all your files
saved. You feel foolish when the program you’re trying to install tells you there are
not enough megabytes here or gigabytes there. You feel foolish when you pop the
cover, see more green and gold staring up at you than at a Notre Dame football rally,
you can’t spot the CPU, the SEC, or the PDQ, and you end up snapping the cover
back on.
It’s a normal feeling. To paraphrase Mystery Science Theater 3000, you should breathe
and just relax. Upgrading your computer has become a part of its everyday maintenance.
It’s no longer merely a way to make your machine keep up with the capabilities
of your neighbor’s. In some cases, you really do have to upgrade your computer
simply so it can keep on doing what it has done before. Yes, it is not an easy job. Yes,
it can be time consuming, and even boring. And yes, it can be expensive.
But it is not insurmountable. Even though the Sci-Fi Channel frequently depicts computers
as having diabolical wishes to conquer the world—or, at least, northern Iowa—
your computer is merely a machine. The way that machine works is far, far simpler
than the way you might think it works. |
