Quick Fix

Have you ever thought of murdering your computer? My friend Jane almost hacked her Pentium III notebook to death when it stubbornly refused to download an MP3 file at the pace that she expected. Her brother gave a very simple yet convincing explanation as to why her notebook isn’t running as fast as his – it’s way too old. 

Yes, it’s old. There’s no question that it will cough out blood when one would try to feed it with applications that are meant for core duo processors. But choking on a 15-second video clip using a high-speed wireless connection? Common! Jane almost resigned to the thought that the problem lies with the processor. She just comforted herself with the thought that it served her well for 2 years, and that it was already time to put it to sleep. 

Her brother told me about her problem. I called Jane up and told her that I might be able to solve her problem if she’ll buy me dinner. Of course, I got a deal 🙂 We met at the pizza parlor near her office. I brought my Pentium II notebook with me to show her that there’s still life after core 2 duo. I ran a Kevin Garnett video clip from nba.com. The video ran smoothly. She was really surprised and asked if I upgraded it. I joked that loaded it with 5GB of RAM. She almost fell for it. 

I checked her notebook’s BIOS and system info. Everything seemed ok. When I tried to check her media player and other applications that facilitate the downloading of files, I found out that they were already terribly outdated. No wonder Shaq dunked in slow motion when I tried to run a clip from nba.com.  Fortunately, we’re using the same media player. I just gave her the URL of the Web site where she could download the driver that she needs to update her program. True enough, everything ran seamlessly after the installation. She didn’t even have to download the new premium (and paid) version of her media player. Device drivers are indeed cheap and easy solutions to laggard PCs and applications.  

Entry Filed under: Device Drivers