Saturday, August 04, 2007

The laptop is dead, long live the laptop

Those of you who read Phill Barron's recent laptop-related posts may notice a certain, shall we say, zeitgeist developing in the Scribe-o-sphere, for I am going to tell you the story of my afternoon, and laptops are going to feature prominently.

My faithful Dell Inspiron had been getting a tad long in the tooth. It was approaching two years old, it needed a memory upgrade if it was to continue being a viable gaming machine, and one of the screen hinges was damaged. I'd already decided to replace it in the next few months, probably with another Dell, when it started throwing frightening hard-drive-related errors. "I'd better back up my data sharpish before the drive goes completely," thought I, as I was powering the machine down and retiring to bed on Thursday night. I remembered this to-do item early this afternoon when the machine suddenly crashed and refused to reboot. Oops.

I'd intended to spend the afternoon deciding what to do for the Red Planet competition. Instead I spent the afternoon in PC World buying a new laptop. It's a Compaq, it's got loads of RAM and a nice graphics card, it's thinner and lighter than the Dell, but now my wallet is also thinner and lighter. I could've done without all that thinning and lightening. Bah.

Oh well, it could be worse. I don't think I've lost too much data, especially since my email is all stored on the Gmail server, and I suspect a bit of patchery-pokery will resurrect the Dell long enough for me to get everything important off. But heed ye my warning, fellow bloggers -- a curse does blight the humble Scribe-o-sphere. Despair of your laptops, for their end be nigh!

5 Comments:

Blogger Jason Arnopp said...

Tell me about it. I suspect mine's on its last legs, too. Recently, it's spent a lot of time telling me what a "good innings" it's had, and drawing up a will using MS Word.

Now you have a shiny new laptop, madam, you can give us your shamefully belated proper Cheltenham reflections! Did I mention this enough the other night? :)

9:38 PM  
Blogger Phill Barron said...

Laptops, grr, grumble, gnash teeth.

10:38 PM  
Blogger William Gallagher said...

And damn and blast and curse and blast it all over again: my four-year-old PowerBook is still sodding perfect.

I want a new one! I just cannot justify it.

It's such a hard life being a Mac user,
William

PS I was using a Dell Inspiron over the weekend. Why do PC laptops have stickers all over them? And exclusively advertising all the very things you've already bought?

12:27 PM  
Blogger Christine said...

I could arrange to drop your PowerBook from a great height, William. Or pour an entire jug of Pimm's into it. Or something else of your choice.

My fee for 'accidents' is £50.

8:42 AM  
Blogger Piers said...

I'll undercut that. Forty quid and the laptop's gone.

Ain't capitalism grand?

9:52 AM  

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