It all started in May 1996 when I talked my wife into buying a computer
on her birthday (for her birthday, I said). Now she did not want
a computer, but she said yes so she did not have to listen to me anymore,
I have been trying to get a computer since 1992. but it never fit
in the household budget.
When I bought my system the 133 MHZ pentiums were going for greater
then $2,000. There was no way we could ever afford something like
a computer, so we charge it (we finally paid that credit card off in April
1998, Thank God). Because we were charging it price was an issue,
so we bought a Packard Bell which was significantly less then any competitors
similar models.
This was my first real computer, all I had ever owned before was a Vic
20 back when I was 12. I have had no formal training in computers,
I basically tough myself everything I know (including the html to make
this web site). I work as a Household Hazardous Waste Specialist
during the day and spend some of my spare time making this web site, unfortunately
I don't have too much spare time or the site could be a lot better.
As time went on I wanted to upgrade, but the information from Packard
Bell did not tell me enough so I turned to the net to find my answers.
All I could find for the longest time was Packard Hell pages and PB sucks
pages. I thought I bought the worst computer in the whole world after
reading those pages. They made me feel so bad and offered nothing
for advice, they simply wanted to complain.
Eventually I ended up finding a place on the web called PBUser.
PBUser was great, everything I ever needed was there in the free message
base, plus they had a number of free pages on various Packard Bell topics.
I was all set and I upgraded my L2 cache and I thought I had a decent little
computer.
The next thing that happened was someone opened the PB Newsgroups (which
I love and recommend you all visit) and Aaron announced the end to the
free side of the PBUser site. I did not know what I was going to
do. My wife would kill me if I asked for a membership to PBUser,
I already spent enough on this computer. So I found a page where
you could get a free membership to PBUser if you wrote a web page on various
topics. I wrote "How
to change the Start Menu in Windows 95" and submitted it hoping for
a free membership. Eventually I got an email back from Aaron saying
that the free membership program was discontinued.
What could I do now? I decided that I spent 3 hours writing my
first web page and it was not going to waste. I found geocities where
I could post web pages for free and I followed the instructions they gave
to create my first web site. The original site was my Environmental
Science web site and a page about the PB 640 System. This was all
located off my Environmental
Science Web Site.
The Packard Bell section started out as nothing more then ONE web page
of what I could do to upgrade my Packard Bell computer, how to tune it
up and to maintain it. As time went buy I kept getting more and more
info. Then I expanded to a few pages, created the Wintune Project
and PB 2020 pages. What I could not believe was that people were
coming to my web site and they would help me out by giving me information
to add. I was also fascinated that people were interested in the
information I have posted.
Eventually the site became many pages and people were asking me to make
pages for their systems, so I did. Then I created this site to hold
all these new pages. The response from all my visitors has been great,
your many encouragement and thank you keep me going. If it were not
for your thank you notes and encouragement I might have continued to keep
these pages going. I probably would have wrote web pages on a different
subject (Such as Environmental Science or Religion). More then
once I was ready to shut the site down, because it is so much much work.
In the Spring of 1998 I began reviewing products and reporting my experiences
to the visitors of my web site. PowerLeap was the first company to
allow me to review their product. Since that time I have reviewed
products for Evergreen Technologies, and Unicore Software. I can
review a product for your company if you want, read this
web page for details.