New Laptop!
Such an ordeal.
First, I dragged Stuart to the Staples nearish our house to get his opinion. He said "get the one you want". Not that helpful. I was looking at a Toshiba P755 for $679 that was a bargain for the speed of the processor etc, but I don't really need a CORE i7 or shittons of RAM. I decided to keep focused on the under $600 area. Lots to choose from.
We went out for lunch at the Thai place next door, then he dropped me off at home and I got in my car to go to Comp USA where I assumed I'd see the greatest selection.
Except the store no longer exists, which I learned by driving by the empty storefront scratching my head. Off to Best Buy.
At Best Buy, I stared and studied and tried out keyboards and narrowed it down and finally made a choice! A Lenovo V570 for $599. My biggest reason was the keyboard. Nice and quiet, like the curvy keys. Decision Made! Happy Me! Except it took forfuckingever to find a salesperson. WTH. The dude selling DIRECTV subscriptions was more than willing to chat with me about the ins and outs of satellite TV, but alas the folks wearing blue shirts were absent. I finally found someone (an assistant manager), who didn't really seem like he want to deal with the unwashed masses. It didn't matter, because the computer that I had settled on, with a lengthy process that rivaled choosing a name for my offspring, was out of stock. Fucking Hell. The less-than-helpful guy said they had them at the Outer Loop store (fuck that I had already made a pointless trip to Hurstbourne I was NOT going to haul myself to the fucking Outer Loop good god why can't anything ever go my way?) and were supposed to get in three the next day. Cool. I asked him how much they charge to transfer files from an external harddrive to a new computer--$80 you all. Screw Best Buy. That is ridiculous. I just paid them $150 to recover my files from the fried laptop.
So I went next to a different Staples, in the same strip mall as Best Buy. They didn't have any Lenovos, and because I was not ready to reopen my mind to making a choice, I went down the road to Office Depot. Oh yeah--it had started raining.
At Office Depot they had a slightly less fancy Lenovo (CORE i3 instead of CORE i5) for the same $599. BUT the salesman said in his opinion Lenovo was cheaply made and first steered me to a Dell, which I had decided against because of the keyboard, then to an ASUS U56E-RBL5. Liked the keyboard, good processor, RAM, etc. This will sound goofy but the thing that hooked me was the palmrest. It is silky smooth and fingerprint resistant like a baby's butt...maybe not the fingerprint part, but you get the picture. And the price--$519. They had MS Office for $100, $49 less than Best Buy, two years of McAfee protection for the price of one deal, and the salesman said he'd transfer my files at no cost. Needless to say I was sold :)
I am now an Office Depot fan.
So I have a shiny new laptop. I like the keyboard a lot. Very nice picture quality on the screen. Very fast. The touchpad scrolls differently than my Vaio, but I'm getting used to it already. My only grumble is the speakers--not very loud. I had the same complaint about the Vaio's speakers, so no big deal. The fancy schmancy speaker laptops were at least $100 more. I've got Office, Firefox, Adblock installed. Now just a matter of trying to remember all the websites I had bookmarked and the associated usernames and passwords.
Maybe I'll finally get some writing done tomorrow! I certainly will spend some time on the treadmill catching up with some Naruto and Castle episodes.
First, I dragged Stuart to the Staples nearish our house to get his opinion. He said "get the one you want". Not that helpful. I was looking at a Toshiba P755 for $679 that was a bargain for the speed of the processor etc, but I don't really need a CORE i7 or shittons of RAM. I decided to keep focused on the under $600 area. Lots to choose from.
We went out for lunch at the Thai place next door, then he dropped me off at home and I got in my car to go to Comp USA where I assumed I'd see the greatest selection.
Except the store no longer exists, which I learned by driving by the empty storefront scratching my head. Off to Best Buy.
At Best Buy, I stared and studied and tried out keyboards and narrowed it down and finally made a choice! A Lenovo V570 for $599. My biggest reason was the keyboard. Nice and quiet, like the curvy keys. Decision Made! Happy Me! Except it took forfuckingever to find a salesperson. WTH. The dude selling DIRECTV subscriptions was more than willing to chat with me about the ins and outs of satellite TV, but alas the folks wearing blue shirts were absent. I finally found someone (an assistant manager), who didn't really seem like he want to deal with the unwashed masses. It didn't matter, because the computer that I had settled on, with a lengthy process that rivaled choosing a name for my offspring, was out of stock. Fucking Hell. The less-than-helpful guy said they had them at the Outer Loop store (fuck that I had already made a pointless trip to Hurstbourne I was NOT going to haul myself to the fucking Outer Loop good god why can't anything ever go my way?) and were supposed to get in three the next day. Cool. I asked him how much they charge to transfer files from an external harddrive to a new computer--$80 you all. Screw Best Buy. That is ridiculous. I just paid them $150 to recover my files from the fried laptop.
So I went next to a different Staples, in the same strip mall as Best Buy. They didn't have any Lenovos, and because I was not ready to reopen my mind to making a choice, I went down the road to Office Depot. Oh yeah--it had started raining.
At Office Depot they had a slightly less fancy Lenovo (CORE i3 instead of CORE i5) for the same $599. BUT the salesman said in his opinion Lenovo was cheaply made and first steered me to a Dell, which I had decided against because of the keyboard, then to an ASUS U56E-RBL5. Liked the keyboard, good processor, RAM, etc. This will sound goofy but the thing that hooked me was the palmrest. It is silky smooth and fingerprint resistant like a baby's butt...maybe not the fingerprint part, but you get the picture. And the price--$519. They had MS Office for $100, $49 less than Best Buy, two years of McAfee protection for the price of one deal, and the salesman said he'd transfer my files at no cost. Needless to say I was sold :)
I am now an Office Depot fan.
So I have a shiny new laptop. I like the keyboard a lot. Very nice picture quality on the screen. Very fast. The touchpad scrolls differently than my Vaio, but I'm getting used to it already. My only grumble is the speakers--not very loud. I had the same complaint about the Vaio's speakers, so no big deal. The fancy schmancy speaker laptops were at least $100 more. I've got Office, Firefox, Adblock installed. Now just a matter of trying to remember all the websites I had bookmarked and the associated usernames and passwords.
Maybe I'll finally get some writing done tomorrow! I certainly will spend some time on the treadmill catching up with some Naruto and Castle episodes.