Now You See It, Now You Don't!

One of my two posts from two days ago is gone. Poof! Gone. With it went the two comments left by Sherpa. Blogger can do some funny things at times. So below this post you will see my response to Sherpa's comments, without his original comments OR one of my two posts that one of his comments pointed toward. All this by way of explanation.

The original post was a comment about my Dell 600m laptop which has recently gotten a new battery ($98 with free shipping from the Dell website - a bargain as they tried to sell me the same item in a "medical" oriented brochure which was mailed to my former employer, who forwarded it to me: the special price for medical professionals who don't take the time to search Dell's support website is ... $140 + shipping!) as well as a new, faster (though smaller) hard drive.

Our family has been revelling in the faster start up times for our Windows computer by using the technique taught to us by Sherpa: Hibernate (Start>Turn Off>Shift-H).

When this procedure was used on the laptop, which gets disconnected from AC power and stored out of the way when not in use, the next time I went to use it, the computer would not turn on and flashed its orange-red battery light at me. Flipping the laptop over and pressing the battery's "meter" revealed NO friendly green LEDs indicating the battery was completely discharged.

The computer responded immediately to being plugged into an AC outlet and is now fully recharged and ready for whatever life throws at it. We hope!

A couple more "tweaks" were needed for it to connect to wireless internet. We had thought, when it would NOT connect to Google's website (its IE homepage), that a brown out had reset our wireless router to default and would have to be reprogrammed. However, I went in and emptied temporary internet files and cookies after which I set the Tools>Advanced>Empty Temporary Internet Files When Browser Is Shut Down to "YES" and the computer is now functioning in a more normal fashion.

There are times when I really DO appreciate Bill Gates: every time I do or , etc., I am very greatful for standardized software. The shortcut keys that I learned to use at work to spare my wrists, work very nicely for my computer at home!