New Laptop, and laptops

Journal Allen Zadr's Journal: New Laptop, and laptops 2

Journal by Allen Zadr on Sunday August 13, 2006 @04:13PM

O.K. I haven't had a real PC upgrade in nearly four years. I cannot find affordable RAMBUS to upgrade the RAM [[the CPU is a 2GHz P4 (not "bad", even now), and it's had a Video Card upgrade, but it's stuck at 512MB of RAM]].

Last Sunday, there's a 24 Month same-as-cash advertisement, with a Laptop (plus rebate) on the same page. So, I say to my dearest, "Hey K2 is starting college and he needs a laptop, and I could use the same one, and - oh - we could probably finance it at zero interest on a two year plan.

Then I told her how the price dropped because the Core 2 Duo was out this week, and the prices on all of the other CPUs were dropping, and that this was the least expensive I've ever seen a Core Duo CPU in a decent laptop. I was basically talking her into something that I knew would be a good purchase, even though we realy don't have the money (see college above). Basically a win-win!

So, off we go to CompUSA. And I fill out the credit app, and they guy comes back with a number, and my wife says, "We could get away with getting one for K1 and K3, too!" Hrmph. Well, I've always been one for equity amongst the little ones. Even though K1 is long moved out, he's working, and struggling, and hell - he's in IT, and it's his Birthday. Yeah, and the Intel chipset IS DirectX 9.0c compatible, so it will run WoW without issue. So, now it's ME being talked into taking a leap.

First off, if YOU are the poor schlep who called up, asking for them to hold one of these laptops until you could get there on Tuesday, I'm really sorry. I didn't know I was taking the last one, and that the last one was on hold for you (who only wanted one), so that I (my wife) could walk away with FOUR! Again, I'm sorry, but the Manager didn't tell us until he walked us out.

So, the laptop only comes with 512MB base, and that's not quite good enough, so - for four laptops - I bought 3 1GB sticks, and now two have 1.5GB, and two have 1GB (perfect). Also needed to put the three-year service plan on all of them. Hey, look, we got almost to that number, and my wife comes over with some back-pack style carrying cases. I say that I don't need one, and that I'm happy with my hard-shell case. So, add three of those. Yeah, honey, you'd probably better put a few of those bags on your checking...

Anyway, I ran an IT department for some time, and Toshibas have always treated me well (no brand has even a good service record, though, so I always get the extended warrantee, because there's only been two systems I've ever dealt with that didn't need the warrantee [ but their twin sisters always still did need that warrantee ]. My only issue with ANY Toshiba is that a few of them have been a little more fragile than I liked, and if you let them fall-asleep in certain ways, they are impossible to wake up without shutting them off, and rebooting - but that's easy enough to set-settings around*, and it won't happen to mine.

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For the Geeks

Toshiba Satellite A105-S4074

6.0 Lbs
Intel Centrino Duo:
Core Duo 1.60GHz
533MHz Front Side Bus (533 MHz DDR2-SDRAM)
Intel A/B/G Wireless
120GB SATA HDD
TruBrite 15.4" LCD 1280x800
Dual Layer -+ DVD/CD drive
SD/xD/MemoryStick Reader
Built-in Ethernet (100)
Built-in WinModem (probably will never use it)
And something that I've only seen on Satellites, that I really like... hard switch wireless on/off and a hardware volume dial for the built-in speakers and/or headphone jack.

It would be a little more perfect if:
...only it had an IR port
...only it had a built-in microphone
...only had a slightly higher resolution

* Wake on Keyboard Input in the BIOS.

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