I am “between” laptops at the moment and am using an old beast (not too old – running XP) I had locked in a cupboard far far away. Apart from the trip down memory lane, courtesy of the old pictures and videos I found on the hard drive (not very good quality – the size of video cameras in those days made them far more difficult to hide); I was pleased that everything seemed to be working – albeit with an external keyboard (old beer spillage ).

An old laptop
Way older than mine
But amusing, nonetheless..

So all is fine and dandy and I’m carrying on as usual. I start noticing little error messages here and there and don’t think much of it. But then they get worse. I find myself having to “reboot” the machine every few hours and find it normal to close down windows that open on their own accord. Without realising, everything is actually going on a downward spiral; until, suddenly, the internet goes. NO INTERNET. No 2oceansvibe stories, no email. NOTHING!

Oh My God!

I got the entire Cape Grace IT department into my suite and they worked on it for an hour. The result – “you’ve got a virus, Sir.”

Oh My Good Lord!

That was when I realised that this machine didn’t have ESET, the virus software which I told you about the last time. But I was in a bit of a quandary as I desperately wanted to download the software, but had no internet access! That’s what I call a “Catch 22 ” (you can use that).

The IT geeks tried to install some kak software called Clamwin, and nothing happened. With my wits clearly about me, I took my flash drive to the Cape Grace Business “Communications” Centre, went to the ESET website and download the trial evaluation software. It was quick, and free.

www.eset.co.za

To cut a long story short, I installed the software, it found 15 viruses, destroyed them and everything works PERFECTLY. The machine is obviously still a little fucked and has lived past its sell-by date, as ESET finds and stops viruses virtually every hour. But as long as it is there, I can carry on.

No shit – it’s fairly incredible.

My computer is, essentially, on life support, courtesy of ESET.

I’ll just wait, patiently, until my sponsored Macbook arrives…