I did something today that I have wanted to do for awhile.  I have some computers in my lab that are probably some of the first XP Dells ever sold and they have gotten so slow.  XP creates profiles for every person who logs on and just deleting them doesn’t seem to speed things up much.

I did a clean install and thought everything was fine but then I couldn’t add it to the domain.  The screen resolution was all wonky too.  I was so frustrated – I thought this was going to be easy. I asked our tech for help and it turned out it WAS easy – I just needed drivers.  I was able to put it on the domain and install Office and the antivirus and the basics like Flash, Adobe Reader, Firefox, and Gimp which I plan to include on all the machines from now on.

We have a lot of kids that are creative and savvy enough to figure out how to use it and I want them to have the software available.  I plan to do more machines and hopefully that will improve the quality of the lab over-all.
I have thirty computers coming after Christmas that will have nothing on them – not even the operating system, so this is my practice.  Finally, I’m excited about something.  We have spent the biggest part of the last month just getting things back to what they were BTC (Before the crash).  It’s good to be moving forward a bit even if it means making old new again.