Computers

A little over a year ago, my siblings got together and bought me a laptop. It has been heavenly.

Except for one thing: the kids use it for school, since it's one of two computers that really function well in the house.

So today I went out and bought two more computers from an artist whose business had upgraded. He was great--he even thanked me for homeschooling my kids!

Anyway, we now have 11 computers that work on one level or another, plus two more that have dead motors but data on them the kids want (so we keep the cpu's hanging around, waiting for me to get around to switching out the power sources).   11 working computers for a family of 8, only seven of whom are old enough to use a computer (we count kids "old enough" at 18 months....). Of those, we now have one for me (thanks to my fantastic siblings), one for Tim (which is dying, but might be saved with new RAM), and 4 more that can be hooked up to the internet (we take them off the  net when their OS gets too old for virus programs to protect, or when they are too slow to run the virus protection and the internet at the same time) that are fast enough to run the school programs I have the kids on, plus two for games and projects offline, and two for toddlers to use for pbskids.org and PoissonRouge.com.

That means that I can FINALLY put everyone on school at the same time, and I won't any longer have to share my laptop with 5-6 hours worth of school a day, as the kids take turns one at a time. Phew.

My living room is looking an awful lot like a school computer lab, though! And I'm having a hard time figuring out where to put the two new machines.....