Well, That Was Fun, And We All Had A Good Laugh
So, instead of music and writing or some combination thereof, I've spent the entire evening frantically moving files over from my venerable Dell 700m laptop to my shiny new Compaq Presario V6000 laptop. Why? Because every time the subject of laptops has come up at work over the past two months, I've mentioned how happy I am with my Dell, and well it withstood traveling across the country in a pannier last year, that's why.
Basically, the power supply wire broke, which I managed to repair with a machete and some packing tape. Then it turned out that the socket the adapter plugs into had also broken...probably one two many trips over the adapter cord had cracked it loose from the motherboard. It's well past warranty, and probably not worth the time, hassle, and energy of repairing. That meant that I had whatever juice was left in the standard and extended batteries to get all of my data off of the Dell and onto a new laptop that I hadn't actually purchased yet. I've been slack in making backups, so the .TIB file on my external USB drive is several months out of date.
The situation was complicated by the fact that I don't want anything to do with Vista. I like XP, and I've got no need for Bill Gates's latest attempt to improve my life. Because all the Vista lappies have "Vista-compatible" hardware in them, there's a good chance that XP drivers might not available for some components. Which means that nuking Vista to install XP would be problematic. Thanks, Bill! CompUSA had exactly one laptop with XP installed. Fortunately, it was mostly decent.
After rebates, I paid $800 for a laptop with twice the RAM, .4 more GHz, and 50 more GB of hard drive space as (or than? whatever) the Dell, which cost $1050 two years ago. Not too bad at all. The dell weighs 4 pounds, and the Compaq weighs 6.6 pounds, which is, I suppose, the difference between the latter's 15-inch display and the former's 12-inch. I'll miss the Dell. It's small and beat to shit and I have fond memories of using it to post here from various beaches and glades during my cycling journey.
At some point, I'll dig into the Dell myself, to see if I can fix the socket and keep it as a knockaround or backup computer. For now, all of my precious data is safe and sound in its new home.
Now it's time to back up said precious data, which should occupy the remainder of my evening.
