New member of the family

My Mom got a new computer and I was over today starting the process of getting it set up and all the stuff I had meticulously backed up on an external USB drive transferred over. It's a nice box, but here's the real plus - it's a modern box, which means that all the work I put into it doesn't take four times as long as it should (really). Her old machine was so old and over-taxed that everything took forever. I don't know how she stood it for as long as she did.

Anyway, Mom's gift to herself (and Dad's anniversary gift to her) has a residual effect of being a gift to me, too, because it will easily divide the time I spend working on it by four, if not more. If you are not technical and have someone providing free on-site support, remember that the biggest gift they're giving you is their time. The clock ticking away while they watch your machine reboot. I bet I have spent literally half a calendar year of my adult life watching machines - mainframes, servers, home PCs - restart, over and over and over.

Anyway, her old box is at our house, and after a proper period of waiting to see if we've truly gotten everything off of it, it will arise, Phoenix-like, with Ubuntu on it and live again. And it will run way more quickly, too, without all that Windoze cruft on it. I am happy for my Mom - she got a great deal. And I get perhaps two to three person-days of my life back for the next five years or so. What shall I do with that time? :o)