I have developed a general dislike for both my laptop and desktop.
Last week, while visiting my other CS half, Ed, at her spiffy new condo, my laptop decided it had to one up how my sister’s and Ed’s Dell laptops overheated. You know how on some of the old Nintendo games, when you died, the screen would break into a bunch of pixels and seemingly dissolve away? Well, my laptop did that, but for real. From the edges out, things went faded away, except for a wide, white strip a little left of center. Eventually everything was a purplish hue, and it kept fading until all was black. Except the white stripe.
Thankfully I’m surrounded by computer people, and when I told this story to John after Malisa had so kindly picked me up from the airport, he immediately told me, “Your video card overheated.”
Augh! This is on top of the laptop having shot another battery in barely over two years. Last time it stopped recognizing the battery. So if I unpluged it, it would panic and put it into hibernation. This time it recognizes there’s a battery, but if I unplug it from the wall, off it goes!
My trusty desktop I’m basically just over. It’s over four years old at this point, and is completely bogged down, which was all my own doing. But it won’t allow me to watch Hulu with it, which is distressing as I have a pretty 20″ widescreen monitor.
I have decided I want a netbook. The problem is, I need to justify the purchase, since small monitors are so not the way for me to go. In fact, small monitors are a terrible plan for me. But last night Cody introduced me to the MSI Wind U115 Hybrid netbook, which has flipping amazing battery life. That has always been my biggest pet peeve with my laptop, the fact it never lasted even close to two hours. And with it’s ability to kill a battery within a year, it’s average is closer to an hour.
Seriously Dell, I bought the laptop in June 2006. Early spring 2007, the computer stopped recognizing the battery that was shipped with the laptop. I went over a year of simply relying on plugging it into a wall, until during the fall of 2008, I happened upon a classmate who had an extra battery for no reason. Early summer 2009, another battery bites the dust. And the DePauw Dell support desk told me it was the battery that was the problem. I think not. Thanks for listening to me when I said it was the computer that’s the issue the first time I ever took the computer to you.
Anyways, I so want a netbook. They’re so tiny and light. And I’m not strong, so that’s really attractive. But I also love the convenience of a full powered laptop.
I do plan, way off in the future, to have two 22″ or 24″ monitors, on arms, with a super ergonomic desk/chair combo. Heaven. But that’ll be the main computer of the home. I go through spurts. I’ll use my desktop and my desktop only, and extensively for periods of time. And then I’ll only use the laptop.
Decisions, decisions.