(Update: 21-05-2021), I’m in the process of moving Hosts, but I’m also dragging all this old tat over with me (for prosperity), because you never know, years from now – the data miners and text diggers might find it amusing. A less amusing fact: is that all of my old download links have been removed.

Well that was fun, NOT!

During the height of summer in the UK – (ho-ho!) – My old XP Laptop started doing weird things, like dropping emails into Junk from people in my contacts book, and it would slooooooowwwww right down for no reason

Looking hard at the ports showed 25 and 465 were going mad sending emails out, that I wasn’t sending – (very frustrating) – seems that I picked up something in my rummaging around the Internet, and/or spam – attachments.

(And I never open them.)

How I got a root virus is beyond me, considering I have the latest virus definitions in my security programmes, but we reckon that’s what the machine has, and we can’t get rid of it.

Anyhow, my old machine (that new shiny HP from Stables), is no longer, and has shuffled of its mortal coil. Pulled the drive, and got some data off it. Everything else is on Drop-Box. A few years ago, and this infection would have been a disaster, but with off-site backups like Google-Drive, (and others), it’s just an annoyance.

The major problem in selecting a new machine I had, was finding the right key-board. The first computer I bought was an HP-Split. Lovely piece of kit, solid-state, runs for eleven hours between charges, but it was missing something I use all the time. Namely a context-menu key, this one shown below in fact.

And it wasn’t till I got the beasty home, that I realised it wasn’t on the key-board, so back it went to Staples, (and to be fair), they changed it without any questions. Trouble is they didn’t have anything suitable, and I really like dealing with them, so I was forced to walk round Curry’s (shudder) and then PC-World (double shudder).

In that awful, jumped up bimbo shop, full of bloody kids, hair-cuts and noise: I found a clearance model all alone, and stuffed under a shelf.

The machine in question was a Sony Vaio, runs for 6.5 hours between charges, 500 Gig hard drive, DVD drive, good full sized key-board, and a touch screen, (that’s just weird).

It’s installed with WINDOWS 8 (yuk!) Setting the computer up with a fixed I.P. address was a pain, even worse than doing it on the XP operating system, but I’m getting there.

My email client (thunder-bird) is also being a right royal pain to set up, and especially trying to import all my old posts, but more importantly; my attachments, and also the documents that have been sent to me over the years.

That stupid thing Microsoft offers, is just a joke.

Another joke, is that goofy Start-Screen, that the jokers Microsoft says is a replacement to the Start Menu: that I’ve found it’s completely unusable, but all is not lost on that front. A quick Goggle search throws up several options to get rid of it. I chose a programme called Classic Shell, and the latest version can be found here, it’s free, and is donation ware.

I paid $20.00 to support it.

(Update as of 05/25/2021: the software has been discontinued with the global adoption of the Win10 desktop.)

Classic Shell completely changes the look and feel of the awful Windows 8 OS desktop. Using this programme makes it usable, and the desktop ends up looking an awful lot like Windows 98SE, that was my favourite OS Platform of all time, but XP and Vista had their good points as well. With Classic Shell, I feel I’m in control with this set up.

Now if I could only get my email working: I’m back into the electronic universe.

Foot note: As can be seen from the screen shot, Word 2003 is also installed: I actually bought Office 2013 with the new machine, and deleted it just as fast.

It is awful.

Question: Who in the Microsoft development team considered that Ribbon to be useful? And why have they dropped the context-Menu key from the set up? And why is it so hard to correct and edit your spelling?

Sorry, but Office 2013 isn’t fit for purpose.

The Sony PC is, and Classic Shell makes it all work. Highly recommended, now I can get back to re-editing chapter four and five of Echo’s, thank-you John for all your hard work to date.

An announcement to all the boys and girls following the Gennaro’s Children series: Book III, titled ECHO’S is nearing completion, and a serialised version of the chapters (in finished draft form), is available on demand.

Thanks for reading, Jessica: Praise be the ORI.