SHCC WYSIWYG Article from October 2013

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This article was written by Don VanSyckel, the club president, as a part of "The President's Pen".  This article appeared in the October 2013 WYSIWYG newsletter.

Looking for USB 3.0 and Trying Windows 8

by Don VanSyckel

The USB 3.0 board in my desktop misbehaved and I thought possibly I should look for another PC with 'native' (built into the motherboard) USB 3.0. I looked around and decide I'd check to see what was available refurbished. There are two stores that have presented at SHCC, Aardvark and Micro Center. I checked Aardvark and was surprised to find it out of business. When I checked Micro Center web site it listed quite a selection of refurbished PCs. The issue with the Micro Center listings is very few of them listed the PC spec's about the USB ports and many didn't list USB ports even as a feature.

I did eventually find one with USB 3.0 ports. Actually it has two USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports. I suppose my keyboard and mouse can limp along on USB 2.0 ports. I'll just have to type slower. The issue with this PC though is it came with Windows 8.0; I was hoping it would have Windows XP Professional (many of the refurbished PCs come from a lease program and leases are generally with a business which generally use Windows XP Professional.)

It only took five minutes to decide to put Windows XP Professional on the PC and I would have right then but I wanted to make the backup disks first. Well, this started another adventure. The PC doesn't make a backup disk, it makes a backup thumb drive. The thumb drive needed to be at least 16 Gb and fortunately I had one. After three hours I ended it. I tried another thumb drive and again ended it after about three hours. This time there were not as many files as the first time. I had an idea, I have a two inch USB extension cable and I used it to comment one of the thumb drives. This time after 15 minutes the program reported it was done.

During all the waiting I was doing I had another thought, after all last month's presentation was Windows 8.1 not 8.0, so I decided to wait for the 8.1 update next month. Then if I'm no happier, it's Windows XP Professional. I'll take my chances after next April when Microsoft stops supporting XP. It's worth it for the usability and lack of aggravation.

I'll have to see how this all works out.

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