I saw a pizza ad that proclaimed that there pizza is made with real tomatoes.  So, are there artificial tomatoes?

Never having replaced a hard drive on a laptop, I wasn’t sure just what to expect.  So, when I plugged it into the side of the case, I was pleased that the machine recognized it and accepted it.

It then asked for the operating system disk so I put it into the CD drive and everything took off.  An hour or so later, the laptop was ready to accept new programs.  Plug and play!!  I love it!!

Since my laptop died and I was fairly sure it was the harddrive, I decided to take the laptop apart and see if I could fix it.  And to my surprise, I found that it plugs into the side of the case and can be unplugged by removing two screw.  So, I removed it.

A quick scan of Best Buy yield a replacement drive to $60.  Not only was it an in-store item, it had more storage than the defective drive.  So, I decided to take a chance are try replacing it.

Whenever you install a new program on your PC, you need to check for the latest update to the program.  And, when you purchase a new PC as I recently did, there are a lot of updates which need to take place.  So, I was not surprised when my PC told me that it needed to update the wireless card.  And, I was not surprised when my wireless quit working there after.

Every time that I would try to connect, it would reject my password.  Then I tried just pushing the sync button on my router but that too failed.  Then, the PC told me to wait while it did some checking.  And, as if by magic, it started working.

Whatever.

One thing that I have noticed about Windows 8 is that it will open screens and not give you an easy way to exit them.  There doesn’t seem to be any back arrows and, short of doing a ctrl-alt-del, no apparent way out.  And while I realize that I am new to the software, some screens are not intuitive.

When ever you set up a new PC, it is always good to update the software.  After all, it has been several months since the PC was built.  So, I went out to the manufacturers website to  download the latest software updates.

The first thing that they asked me for was the model number of the machine.  No problem, I am sure the number is on the outside of the box.  But, I looked.  No number.  Next, I checked the outside of the PC.  It revealed many numbers, but not the ones that I needed.

Eventually, I checked the receipt.  I found the number and entered it.  Success!!

Well, by now, most experts agree that flight MH370 has been hijacked.  But, since no terrorist groups have claimed responsibility, we can only conclude that the hijacking its self was not the act a terror.  Rather, the act of terror is yet to come.

One of the viruses that I had to do battle with when I was setting up my new laptop, was the Snap.do aka Shopping Helper.  This virus attaches itself to all of your browsers and hijacks them so that when you use your browsers, Snap.do takes you to their own web site to sell you their software products,

I have no idea where Snap.do came from or how it got past my virus protection. All I know is that it took me over 4 hours to cleanse all of my browsers and get rid of it.

In the past, when ever I downloaded anything, I could find it at the green arrow.  Not so with the new Windows 8.1.  It took me several attempts and several minutes to find my stuff.  And, the location changed from moment.  Some times it was on the right side of the screen and some times it was on the left side of the screen.  This was very frustrating.  But, eventually, I learned the various hiding places for my downloads.

One of the first things that I needed to do with my new laptop was to install the antivirus protection software.  And while the laptop came with a 30 trial, I already had a subscription for my other machines and opted for using that instead.

So, I loaded the antivirus CD into the drive and waited.  Since my new machine is windows 8.1, I didn’t know what to expect.  Moments later, a box popped in the upper right hand corner of the screen asking me to click on it for instructions.  But, as I was moving there with my mouse, I bumped the edge of the screen and another box appeared.

Unfortunately, before I could close the new box, my CD box disappeared.  This happened several times before I successfully made it to the CD box.  That is when I realized that this new machine was not going to be plug and play.