Spring Cleaning

I am the type of person who keeps his older computers until they no longer work. Even then I try to salvage some parts just in case I might need them in the future. Of course, I never have enough time to start on my other projects so the parts just sit in a drawer and age. My laptop computer is a MacBook, and I have two machines in my office. One machine is my internet machine while the other machine is my work machine. The internet machine is occasionally used for work, but for the most part is used for research and running processor intensive tasks so my work machine isn't burdened. The thing is, my older machine use to be my main work machine. I got my new machine last winter after my old internet machine died. It was a refurbished machine and was on sale so it was dirt cheap. When CS3 came out, the minimum requirements from my old work machine no longer were adequate to run it, but my new internet machine fit the bill, so I had to change machines.

The problem is that the new work machine was full of all sorts of programs and other stuff that I never got rid of. And Windows has a tendency to slow down as you use it. In fact, many experts recommending re-installing windows as a way of improving performance. With a lot of junk on the system, I figured that I should just start from scratch. So today (I don't know why, just a gut feeling) I decided it was time to refresh my work machine. I de-activated my copy of CS3 (see earlier entries for my rants on why copy protection sucks) and backed up my data. Once done, I inserted the restore disks and let it run. It asked if I wanted fix my current copy of windows or do a format. I wanted to be thorough and selected format. Once it started installing Windows, I started thinking about how it was going to handle my Linux partition. Sure enough, it simply got rid of it. This is okay as I had nothing important on there and was planning on installing ubuntu over it anyway.

I forgot how long it actually takes to install software. I am in fact writing this while the machine is trundling away. The clean start is kind of nice, almost like getting a new computer. Except, of course, it is not that much faster. Though with family coming down this weekend and a wedding to attend, I probably should have focused on getting ahead with Coffee Quest Revenge work. Still, my gut instinct was insisting that I do the cleaning today, so perhaps my subconscious is aware of something that I am not. Or perhaps I am just overly paranoid.