The Death of a Computer

At least it happened on tax free weekend. For about six months now, the fan in my computer has been making a strange noise and since it is connected to some other important part that would have to be replaced also, the decision was made for conservative therapy,, that is to say,, let 'er die. Now it seems that the video card is also starting to malfunction. As I sit here, the entire side of my computer case lies flayed open in order to keep the internal workings cool,, but actually, the fan now seems to be working. Go figure. I looked at what I wanted to order from Dell, and then went down to the kiosk in the mall,, where I got exactly what I wanted for two hundred dollars less,, free shipping and handling,, and no tax. Now I sort of wish I had put that savings into 4GB of RAM. I am a wimp and had them install XP. Why? Because my pedigree software for the pigs is best functional it seems with XP-- otherwise I would have to "tweak" the program. I am afraid that my days of tweaking anything are fairly well over. The computer tends to die at unspecified intervals and then may take days to be able to reboot, or minutes,, depending on its whim. I bought an external hard drive to transfer all my good stuff from this computer to the next. Estimated delivery- two weeks. I actually start to get anxious when I start worrying about all the things I have on this computer that I might forget about transferring.