Musings of an Old Technophobe

Apologies for the absence, but I finally killed my laptop. Not this one, obviously, but my old one. It was something of a mercy killing, in that it had been on its last legs for some time – since I slammed my fist down on its keyboard a few months back, in fact, leaving it somewhat dented and temperamental. When not freezing, it developed the alarming opposite habit of sprouting duplicate windows faster than I could shut them down, until the screen looked like an infinite pack of cards. Then, the other day, its dust-clogged fan started whining like a Stuka in full nose-dive, at which I had the bright idea of getting the Hoover out and vacuuming it. This sorted out the whining problem, alright, and I had a few blissfully quiet operational minutes – until the damn thing overheated and shut itself down. Yep, I’d bust the fan for good. Perhaps giving it a good shake would get it going again. Nope. (Nor would banging it against the side of the desk.) It was now me against the machine – how much data could I retrieve in each ten-minutes-every-hour window between switching it on and it switching itself off and having to be left to cool down again? Not very much, it turned out. (No, I hadn’t backed everything up...) But finally I got there, and so off I went to the shops, and back I came with a brand-spanking new super-duper (budget) model. Which was great – except, bright spark that I am, I couldn’t work out how to access any files. Back at the shop the somewhat bemused assistant tactfully guided me in the direction of the ‘file explorer’ icon. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I wondered what that was.’ What an idiot…