Oh God It's So Slow

My computer and I, we have an understanding. I understand that until I am willing to invest more than $300 at a time, I will not have a top of the line machine; computer understands that even though it is not a top of the line machine, I will love it. Recently, though, there has been trouble in paradise.

Upon returning from our weekend in St. Thomas, computer was sad. Sad in a very very slow way. At first, I did what any remotely tech-savvy person would do. I made sure that I had no memory-heavy processes taking up space, verified that the wireless card was working, and rebooted. Usually this cures all ills. Not so this time. Not only is the internet connection so slow that in order to load a page I must type in the address and then take a shower while the page loads, but programs are running at a fraction of their usual speed. So I went to level 2 home tech support: I ran the mother of all virus scans. Ordinarily, this process takes about 4 hours; this time it took about 36. And what did it tell me in the end? No infected files. (It should be noted that last week I ran anti-spyware software as a maintenance thing.)

I have no virii. I have no background tasks eating memory. I just last month doubled my RAM. I'm pretty much out of ideas. Which means I have to turn the computer over to devoted partner who wants to come home after a long day and work on my computer about as much as he wants to come home after a long day and clean grout out of the shower. Additionally, I already needed his supervision on a server move for one of my websites. Yeah I know how to do geeky things like move a mysql database, but when I inevitably screw it up or manage to migrate only some of my data, it's nice to have him around.

All of this is only going to the unfortunate truth that I am in desperate need of a new computer. This current incarnation is a Frankenstein's monster of cobbled together bits and pieces that have upgraded over time (new hard drives, new power supplies, new fans, new memory, new graphics cards), but the motherboard may well be over 6 years old. Which is old. It's like 85 in people years. And while I have the money, I just hate HAVING to spend it. (Even as I have already decided to build the next computer as opposed to letting Dell do it - having devoted partner to supervise computer building really is a boon.) And once I buy a new computer I will have to buy Adobe CS4. My current copy of Photoshop is a) old and b) non-transferable due to lack of CD. So now I'm in it for the cost of the computer and the cost of the software. The idea of starting from scratch is both fantabulous and several days' worth of work I'd rather not do (this is, of course, after I take a deep breath and spend the money).

So I'm desperately hoping that devoted partner can work his magic and save the little computer that could, at least for another six months. In the meantime, I guess I'll learn how to play Super Mario Bros. on the Wii.