Finally

I finally bought a new laptop! Yay for me! The other computer is now doing fine too. So what did I buy? Not an Apple. Heh

I stuck with Windows and purchased an HP dv-7-2273cl Entertainment Notebook. Yes, I've heard all the horror stories about HP but I had my reasons (one being it's 17.3 in. and I needed a larger screen and another was that it was $400 cheaper at Costco and HP now offers a 2 yr. warranty instead of 1). The laptop that just died was also an HP but it was an HP Compaq running an AMD processor. Now AMD has a tendency to run hotter than Intel so I think that may have contributed to the frying. I had built a desktop a couple years ago using an AMD processor and I did run into heat problems.

I also bought an HP because I have a HP xb4 docking station that I absolutely love and wanted to continue using. I love the thing because it makes using my laptop damn near like using my desktop. It has reasonable Altec Lansing speakers, 6 USB ports, a wireless keyboard and mouse and all kinds of other connections that would be available on a desktop. It also has a slot for an extra drive to use for backup. Anyway, I love it.

I did purchase some other things to go along with my new laptop. I bought a 500 gb pocket drive for my docking station to backup all my goodies and a marvelous Zalman 2000 laptop cooling fan.

The Zalman cooling fan rocks. It's all aluminum, does a great job of keeping the laptop cooler, has 2 fans that are so quiet you have to check to see if they're running even on it's highest speed, 2 USB ports (it runs via USB) and is built for my larger 17.3 laptop. It also has an anti-slip strip to keep your laptop from sliding away. Zalman makes great fans. While it was more expensive ($62), it's worth it. Definitely a superior product.

So now I'm set for a bit. All I'm doing now is learning WIN 7. I never upgraded to Vista so it's a nice change from my XP Pro that I run on my desktop. I love the split screen ability and so far I've had no problems. Next purchase will be a new desktop

Dead Computer

Yea, dead as in toasted mother board. That's what happened up north in July. At the time the options were bleak. It was simply too far to drive to even have the thing checked out and a motherboard repair of a 2 year old laptop was just not worth the money. Plus there was no place to purchase a new one for a reasonable price. Instead I decided to live without a computer until I came back to IL. I arrived in IL yesterday.

At first I thought "OMG, how will I survive without a 'puter??!! I will surely die without instant, nanosecond info! No blogs, no email, no up-to-the-minute news!! No arguing with silly Republicans! Arghhhhhh!!!" Well, obviously, I lived. And, frankly, it wasn't so bad after all. I did learn to use my phone for email because I didn't want to come back to 500 emails wasting space. But the rest of it? Blogs, news, weather, etc.? After a few days it didn't matter. I found other ways to spend my time and was pleasantly surprised. I discovered that I had actually been missing some things.

I wondered if people truly realized the amount of time they spend on line. I would bet not. Even though I never did spend my entire day on line I found that I could do other things. Other things such as go outside and wander around in the woods with my dogs, swim, walk, read or just plain sit quietly and relax. It was an enlightening experience...turning OFF the internet noise. More people ought to try it more often.

So, I will be purchasing a new laptop but I'm not going to return to the number of hours I used to spend on line. Not even on the desktop. No way, no how. Heh!