About ten days ago, my laptop decided to up sticks and shuffle its digital consciousness off this mortal coil. Happily I had backed up everything including my Outlook PST file, all ITunes music and downloaded movies (did I say Bootleg???). Other files I l keep on a USB stick and for really old archived stuff I keep it on an external hard drive…….Oh sorry it’s called an external storage device. Hmph yeah whatever!
The point is that I am at present computer-less so I’m blagging Osita’s Dell for the odd task whilst I decide what to do about mine. Any normal person would just go and purchase a new l slaptop and be done with it but mine was an older Dell inspiron that had, wait for it, a 9 pin Dsub serial port. Oooh, WOW, Jeepers, not that old chestnut I hear you say.
Hey, in my line of activity I need one of those because every manufacturer of marine electronics seems to think that the rest of the world only uses said I/O protocol. USB it seems has yet to arrive in the marine world. There’s the odd fire wire port to be found on VDR’s but on the whole, serial is the norm and even the fire wire is of the 6 pin variety and most slaptops come equipped with the four pin breed which is no good since we need the other two pins to carry voltage.
I’m due to receive a new one at some point from the company but we are searching for that elusive serial port version so it’s not going to happen overnight. Yes, there are USB to serial converters but they don’t always work and we need a decent brand name as our machines have a hard life on and off ships and slung under cranes to get kit aboard when transferring from harbor launches.
In the mean time, I’m missing MY stuff easily accessible on MY computer including work files, podcasts, movies and synchronizing contacts and stuff. If this goes on much longer I’m going to have to go for therapy, I’m getting grumpy.
Thanks for reading again.
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