Cabbage and Semolina: Memories of a 1950s Childhood has received some lovely reviews on Amazon recently.

I collected some of my ancestors' signatures together a few weeks ago and now I've used my new scanner for some samples of handwriting. These samples are from the reverse of postcards sent to my Great Aunt Edith Smith by her sisters and her mother.

Now I've got it working, I'm really pleased with the new scanner. Just need more time to get on with scanning the documents.

8/9/10 April 2017
My Kindle Ebook Writing Your Family History On-Line is FREE to download.
Readers who don't have a Kindle may be interested to know that there is a free Kindle app for phone, laptop, iPad, tablet etc which can be downloaded from every bookpage in the Amazon Kindle store.
Follow this link to my Amazon Author Page: 
https://www.amazon.co.uk/C-Murray/e/B009R7CRVC 
​to get your free copy of
Writing Your Family History On-Line.

In early March I decided to make another effort to scan all my Family History documents and re-organise some of the information on my website.

Little did I know what would happen next.

The remainder of this post is not for technophobes or those who believe that "if it can go wrong, it will go wrong". Such readers should move onto another post now!

Shortly after writing the fateful blogpost I was blessed with an unrequested Windows 10 update.

I knew something was wrong when four hours later the update was still underway.

But the next day all seemed well and I booted up my laptop as usual.

And the laptop froze - and unfroze - and froze again, on and off for the rest of the week. Sometimes losing stuff in the process.

Although a few Twitter users were complaining to Microsoft about the update this petered out after a few days and didn't appear to be a widespread problem.
 
It dawned on me that the laptop had been in use for several years and had maybe passed its sell-by-date.

So I ordered a replacement laptop and was excited to receive it.

The new laptop was easy to set up but a few days went by before I was accustomed to the changes that have been introduced including a new version of Microsoft Office.

I had to set about transferring my software.

Fortunately, my recently purchased Photoshop Elements 15 allowed for downloading onto a second machine and that was easily installed. 

Then on to transfer Family Treemaker onto the new machine.

Shock! Horror! The version of Family Tree Maker I've been using is so old it wouldn't transfer.

Fortunately, although I don't make much use of it, I've got my family history records on a Family Tree on the Ancestry website. Which is ok for now but I really prefer desktop Family Tree software.

The new laptop has a touchpad which is fine but sometimes I prefer to use a separate mouse. The old mouse didn't like the new laptop and kept freezing so I sent off for a replacement wireless mouse which works well.

I usually attach an additional monitor to my laptop  and extend the screen across both monitors. This is brilliant if you're looking at documents or old photos etc and writing about them. You can see the document / photo much better on the larger screen and just get on with writing using the small laptop screen. It's also great to extend the screen if you're researching. Then I have the larger screen for the Internet and use the small screen for the writing. 

But the connection from the monitor into the new laptop didn't fit so I had to work out what sort of adapter I would need.

This was a challenge but I solved it by the simple expedient of looking on Amazon for the best-selling adapter to connect a laptop to an extra monitor and hoping for the best. And it works fine!

Right, I thought. All set up!

And one evening linked up our scanner to the new laptop and settled down for a couple of happy hours wallowing among the documents and planning to scan the ones I wanted digitised. 

Oh no! Now the 3-in-1 printer/copier/scanner didn't like the new laptop either.

Fortunately Amazon were selling replacements for £30 and that arrived a couple of days later and was up and running in no time.

Except it wouldn't scan.

Copy - yes. Print - yes.

No scanning.

Three hours later and after following through troubleshooting guides, downloading latest bits of operating software and much hair-tearing, it still didn't function.

Then I had the bright idea of uninstalling the failed attempt to install the old printer and that did the trick. Finally, the new scanner was in action.

I think that's the whole saga.

You can tot up the cost yourself but you can imagine where most of this year's holiday money has gone.
​
Looks like it will be Southport for a weekend after all!

My ebook Writing Your Family History On-Line is FREE  to download on 8/9/10 April.
http://amzn.eu/gidNWG6
Hit the link if you'd like to grab a copy.
Readers who don't have a Kindle may be interested to know that there is a free Kindle app for phone, laptop, iPad, tablet etc which can be downloaded from every bookpage in the Amazon Kindle store.