Yesterday I went to Fry's and, after only a reasonable amount of dithering and back-and-forth, bought a new computer. It's a Lenovo Ideapad with an i5 processor, and any number of other things I don't fully understand. Marcus came with me and helped me choose a machine, and then very kindly helped me uninstall a lot of the Windows-standard junk ( Read more... )

One of the lawyers in my office is a habitual packrat and bargain-hunter. Most of the time, this results in him buying, say, a brand-new set of expensive office chairs, at 80% off, that none of us need or have room for. But just now, he called me just to say that Office Depot is having a sale on laptops - specifically, theseFor only $270 - the ( Read more... )

We recently got a new desk for the front of our office. It's a fold-up desk/shelf unit. It looks like it's intended to be used mainly with a laptop computer. The desk portion is just a half an inch too short to accommodate the flat-screen monitor that we have for our communal desktop ( Read more... )

Dear Internet and people smarter than me ( Read more... )

My home internet has been broken all day (the usual standby of unplugging everything and plugging it back in, in order, didn't help, so I don't know what else to do), and I spent most of the day in Clackamas County, watching elections workers sort ballots. So of course by now, my inbox is hopelessly overflowing, and I'm way behind. Arg!

I have OJIN online access!

And it only took two hours, four web browsers, two Java downloads, three calls to tech support, and $295 to get it.

Next: For how much really? There's a "small monthly fee," based on usage rates, but no one's ever explained exactly what that is.

I have the weirdest problem with my laptop computer. Starting at some point this morning, the computer lost the ability to control the Finder by keyboard. Command-N for a new Finder window, Command-W to close a window, arrows to navigate, all no longer work. I know it's not a problem with the keys themselves - they work fine on other applications. ( Read more... )

My computer may not be dead after all. We'll see ( Read more... )

My computer died tonight. It shut off and wouldn't restart, while I was in the middle of writing an email ( Read more... )

A particular button on my Macintosh laptop has shown a disturbing inability to function today. I know that occasional authors will consciously avoid using this symbol in writing major works of fiction, but I lack this skill, and it still is a substantial trial, particularly for writing court applications. If my trusty laptop cannot function, my ( Read more... )