computer FAIL
Note to self, Kat: never spend less than $400 on a laptop and expect to get more than a year's decent usage out of it. Thanks, self; I'll remember that.
Note to flist: Kat will not be around much for the next 3 to 8 days because her computer is very seriously on its last legs. (And, yes, I ran virus scans, defraged, let it rest, made sure I didn't have any weird memory-intensive startup aps I didn't know about etc. to no avail. It's just a cheap POS dying on me a few months after the warranty expired. I hate planned obsolescence with a passion right now which is funny since I was joking with the salesman about it when I said a 1-year warranty was enough.)
I can't get into Skype or Yahoo or gmail, MSN is glitchy, and AOL keeps freezing. Opera is slow, Firefox titchy, and IE hasn't been working for me for months (plus it takes me about ten minutes to actually get one to load). Having more than 2 browser tabs open is begging for a crash & ditto for more than 1 Word document. Internet and Word at the same time? I can get an hour or two before I crash. This seriously cramps my multitasking style since I'm the kind of person who likes to have 2 or 3 docs, several IMs, and about a dozen browser tabs open. Oh, yeah, time to take this compy out behind the barn and put it out of its misery. I'll probably wait until the new computer arrives before I use this one for meat and hides...
I didn't go cheap this time. Seriously, I haven't spent this kind of money on a computer since the 1990s (more than $1,000 even after the $250 off sale was factored in). Thank the gods for points redeemable for gift cards :D Saved me several hundred out-of-pocket. And this time I was a good girl and sprung for the full 2-year warranty.
# Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 2.20GHz processor
# 4GB DDR2 memory
# 320GB hard drive
Excessive for word processing, LJ, email, and IM? Kinda, but I multitask like nuts and I plan on this computer being with me for a good long time so it seemed wiser to do a Tim Allen and opt for more power. The battery life is a joke (seriously, how does it work that my first laptop got 6-8 hours and modern ones get 2-4?) but I can always pick up a spare if I need to go anywhere without outlets.
Bottom line: I'm going to be doing very little threading until I have the new computer, I'll be responding to LJ notifications fairly slowly since I can't do multiple tabs, and I may not be reachable on IM. email is probably going to be the best way to reach me for awhile. I leave you with this
Note to flist: Kat will not be around much for the next 3 to 8 days because her computer is very seriously on its last legs. (And, yes, I ran virus scans, defraged, let it rest, made sure I didn't have any weird memory-intensive startup aps I didn't know about etc. to no avail. It's just a cheap POS dying on me a few months after the warranty expired. I hate planned obsolescence with a passion right now which is funny since I was joking with the salesman about it when I said a 1-year warranty was enough.)
I can't get into Skype or Yahoo or gmail, MSN is glitchy, and AOL keeps freezing. Opera is slow, Firefox titchy, and IE hasn't been working for me for months (plus it takes me about ten minutes to actually get one to load). Having more than 2 browser tabs open is begging for a crash & ditto for more than 1 Word document. Internet and Word at the same time? I can get an hour or two before I crash. This seriously cramps my multitasking style since I'm the kind of person who likes to have 2 or 3 docs, several IMs, and about a dozen browser tabs open. Oh, yeah, time to take this compy out behind the barn and put it out of its misery. I'll probably wait until the new computer arrives before I use this one for meat and hides...
I didn't go cheap this time. Seriously, I haven't spent this kind of money on a computer since the 1990s (more than $1,000 even after the $250 off sale was factored in). Thank the gods for points redeemable for gift cards :D Saved me several hundred out-of-pocket. And this time I was a good girl and sprung for the full 2-year warranty.
# Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 2.20GHz processor
# 4GB DDR2 memory
# 320GB hard drive
Excessive for word processing, LJ, email, and IM? Kinda, but I multitask like nuts and I plan on this computer being with me for a good long time so it seemed wiser to do a Tim Allen and opt for more power. The battery life is a joke (seriously, how does it work that my first laptop got 6-8 hours and modern ones get 2-4?) but I can always pick up a spare if I need to go anywhere without outlets.
Bottom line: I'm going to be doing very little threading until I have the new computer, I'll be responding to LJ notifications fairly slowly since I can't do multiple tabs, and I may not be reachable on IM. email is probably going to be the best way to reach me for awhile. I leave you with this