Technical problems

Sorry for there not being an update for a while now, I've been having LOTS of problems here. The biggest problem has been the external hard drive deciding it doesn't want to work anymore, which is baaaaaaaad. It either doesn't mount, or mounts then disappears. I've managed to get a few really important files off it, and now I'm leaving it alone until I can get a new external and shift everything over to that, then re-format it, which seems to be the way to solve the problems, according to a few forums. I was *really* worried the other night when it failed, there's so much on that drive now, important work stuff and lots more.

With the current things I needed to keep working now on the (becoming increasingly full) laptop, I thought it would be ok. I wouldn't need to use the external until I've got the new one, so all I needed to do was work on the projects I had lined up for the next few weeks, get a new hard drive, and everything would be fine. I was of course, wrong.

Earlier this evening my wireless optical mouse decided to pack up, mid project. Tried pressing the connect buttons on the wireless receiver and the mouse - nothing. Tried changing the batteries for some fresh ones and pressing the connect buttons - nothing. Went to the Logitech website, trawled through their trouble shooting pages (ignoring the obvious statements about changing batteries and reconnecting the mouse and the receiver) and found a page about Mac problems. From this I tried verifying and repairing the system permissions - nothing. I tried their suggestion of downloading their connection utility software. Installed it, had to restart the Mac and opened the program. 'Please connect the wireless receiver then restart this programme'. So, according to Logitech, I need to have a working receiver before I can run diagnostic software about why it isn't working? THIS DOES NOT HELP ME, LOGITECH.

There's no way I can just settle for using the ibook's trackpad to work on some of the projects I need to get done, it's not feasible.

So, here I am, afraid to use the external hard drive and without a mouse to do any work. Sigh. And it's 7 days until pay day when I can afford to buy a new mouse to get working again. This is going to be a long 7 days.