A computer sounds like a good idea

When we went to Dallas and stayed with my cousin, they had an old laptop that was set up on the kitchen table for my cousin's 3 year old daughter Anna to play with. And I was surprised at how well she did with the computer (and I think the touchpad may have been easier than the mouse for a young child). So anyway, I thought that might be a good idea at our house even though we really have nowhere to put it. I have an old laptop, so I figured I'd just modify it to remove basically all unneeded programs and set up some shortcuts to Nick Jr, Disney, and a few other sites.

So when I say "old laptop", I mean like ancient. I think I got it in 1998. So at the time, it ran the newest and greatest Windows 98. And it's real spiffy with an interchangeable floppy drive and DVD-ROM drive (that's right - it actually does take DVD's). Back then, most internet connections were dial up, so it's got all kinds of telephony set up and basically no network connection wizards. However I do have a Wireless-B notebook card to put in it, so it can pick up wireless connection (albeit very slowly).

It's been a couple of years since I even opened the thing up and I do remember having problems with it in the past. But it did boot up with no issue, though I couldn't initially get the wireless card to work. So I was working on it before dinner and Ethan came in to "help" (hammer the keys with his fist) and it suddenly went black. So probably a good indicator that it won't last long with him around anyway. Or maybe I need to put it up higher so he can't get it. So I stopped messing with it for a while.

I picked it back up after the kids went to bed. Got it to come back on, but it was telling me the wireless card software wasn't installed. So I found the software, put it in, installed it, and also removed some of the other programs on there (Quicken, EPSON printer, etc) and all our old saved documents. Still won't connect to the internet, so I try a reboot. And it comes back with "Operating System not found". That's not good.

Fortunately I have my trusty Windows 98 CDROM that was with all this old computer stuff so I stick that in and choose to reboot from the CDROM to reload Windows 98. Then it comes back with "Can't continue with Windows 98 setup because the computer has no hard disk or there is a problem with the hard disk". Piece of crap. It just worked like 5 minutes ago.

I try a few more times, but same old junk. So that's the end of the story. No computer for the kids because I don't want to deal with this piece of shit. Apparently notebook computers really aren't meant to last 11 years. I'm going to let Braden smash it and I'll try to get it on video to share with you all.