Thank you everyone for your support

I have been a bit scarce for a while and I apologize for that. This is partly due to lack of motivation during the pandemic but also because my 14 year old Windows XP computer suddenly died a couple weeks ago on August 26. I thought I had better post an update on my situation so that nobody would worry that I had caught Covid-19 or something. My husband and I are both well. We are staying safe and taking every precaution to avoid the virus. He had a liver transplant in 2010 and he is on immunosuppressants. He has had three shots of the Pfizer vaccine but there is no telling how well he is protected so we are being extra careful. While I was shopping for a new Windows 10 computer, I was able to use my husband's computer for email but not much else.

As you can imagine, it was pretty traumatic for me to lose my computer after so many years. I knew for a long time that the day would come when I would have to get a new computer but I was dreading it. You see, I've been using some very old software programs to edit my photos and artwork and also to create my beading patterns. I was worried that those programs would be much too old to run on Windows 10 and I can't afford to buy new software. I don't even know of replacements for some of them. 

My old computer had three hard drives in it and two of them died. The ones that died were the primary drive and the secondary drive which stored most of my data. Thankfully the hard drive that did survive was my backups drive so I really didn't end up losing much. I have been religious about backing up my data weekly and even daily and now I am so glad that I did that. Having said that, when I did the most recent full backup of my files in August, I somehow forgot to backup the folder for my beading blog. Luckily, I still had a previous backup of it and I was able to copy the missing blog posts from the internet and they are now restored to that folder. Whew!

I got my brand new Windows 10 computer on September 3. The good news is that I was able to install most of my old programs! Some of them work just as they should and some have minor glitches but are still mostly usable. These are the relevant programs that I can still use on Windows 10:

Microsoft Publisher 97
Microsoft Publisher 2000
Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 (2003)

Publisher is what I use to create my beading pattern files and my options for doing so would be very limited if I had to make them in WordPad going forward. I also use Publisher 97 to create the blank menu calendars that I post on my website. Unfortunately, the calendar creating feature doesn't work on Windows 10. Thankfully I can still use that feature in Publisher 2000 but it does work differently and not quite as easily. 

Paint Shop Pro is my main graphics and photo editor. I do have several newer versions of PSP but version 8 is my favorite and I'm very happy that I can still use that version. 

The bad news is that I can't install EasyBeadPatterns on my new computer. Unless I can find a free replacement for EasyBeadPatterns, I will no longer be able to create color charts for my peyote and brick stitch earring designs. I'm really bummed out about that. Hopefully they will post an updated version that will run on Windows 10. Windows 7 was the last supported version. 

Having said that, while searching online for a similar bead pattern app, I came across THIS article about an online bead pattern app called Beadographer. I have only had time to take a quick look at it but it looks like I might be able to make it work for making my color charts. Click HERE to take a look at the app. I haven't yet determined which features are available in the free version and which ones aren't.

UPDATE: Someone posted in the comments that they are able to run EasyBeadPatterns on their Windows 10 computer. I have tried everything that I can think of to make it work but I just get these error messages. If you know how to fix this, please let me know. The program actually installs and shows up in the programs list but I get some of these errors during installation and some when I try to run the program. I have uninstalled and re-installed it several times with the same results.

Thankfully my scanner and camera both seem to be working fine on Windows 10. I'm very pleased that the internet is so much faster on my new computer and websites actually work as they should. I can once again use PayPal correctly and I can log into my Blogger accounts once again. On my old computer I could edit my blogs with Firefox but not in any other browser.

Anyway, I want to thank all of you for your continued support over the years. I wouldn't have been able to buy a new computer without that support.