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