requiem aeternam dona eis domine et lux perpetua luceat eis

[oracne]

My laptop appears to be on its way to laptop heaven. Am resigned to shelling out large cash to replace it, becaues I really don't want to do without something to write on.

I back everything up obsessively, so only lost the couple paragraphs I was working on last night.

It smells faintly of smoke and ozone.

Farewell, free laptop of ancient

Comments

[halimede]

Smoke and ozone? Sounds pretty fatal. :(

well, it was free...

[oracne]

It had already had a life at the company where a friend worked, and when they junked it, he gave it to me. I've used it for about two and a half years; it ran Windows 95.

It was slow, but I mostly needed it to write on.

It shorted out twice while I was working last night; I only turned it on after the second time to copy over some files, just in case. Which it did for me, valiant thing, only ve-ry slow-ly.

[coffeeandink]

I am in the same position, roughly; I stole my father's laptop when mine died in february, but I can't take it with me to the new place.

Since I mostly want ultralight portability, I've been looking at the IBM refurbished laptops -- I can get one that's a couple of years old, connects to the Internet, has a few gigs of storage, and weighs less than four pounds. Suitable for my needs.

Though I drool over the new top-of-the-line ones.

[oracne]

Does one find refurbished ones at the ibm website?

Since I mostly only need word processing, I don't need the world's most wonderful. Especially considering what I was using before!

It'd be cool to have a battery, though.

[coffeeandink]

IBM's Clearance Corner.

IBM Certified Used Equipment.

Dell also does something similar. I'm not sure about other manufacturers.

You can also try half.com, but I've always been reluctant to do that for expensive computer stuff. The manufacturer-certified stuff at least comes with some kind of warranty.

[oracne]

Ooh.

I also found this:
http://www.usanotebook.com/hotdeal.php

with somewhat older used/refurbished machines. All of them are newer than what I had!

[oursin]

At least the hard disk didn't decide to die after you had lugged it abroad for an extremely compressed trip to foreign archives, on the way to a conference, at the exact point when I was sitting in the carrel with the first box in front of me. (Which happened with My First Laptop.) So I was left carting it around as a dead weight for several days.

[ex_truepenn]

Losing text is the most frustrating thing about our brave new technological world.

I'm sorry. :(

[oracne]

It wasn't much. I can do it better when I rewrite it.