Laptop

The new laptop? It’s a Dell Inspiron 640m. Nothing special, nothing cutting edge (well, except for the fact it’s got a Centrino Duo™ Dual Core processor, which is pretty new) but it’s fairly lightweight, has a decent 14″ screen, and what looks to be about 7 hours of battery life, which is what I wanted.

When all’s said and done, the laptop will be used primarily while I’m travelling and/or away from home, so the battery life was the driving factor more than anything. It’s definitely got the oomp and processing power too, along with a very nice 1Gb of RAM, so it should do for the next couple of years at least.

I’ve spent the last couple of days putting on all the stuff I need on it, and now I’m pretty much sorted. Good, innit?

Expensive

Yesterday was – how shall I put this – fucking expensive. Well, if I’m honest, the money had already been spent – it was just that yesterday turned out to be the day when it all arrived. So I kind of look at it that it’s only expensive once you’ve received it. Strange, but true.

So anyway, last week I’d ordered some new Cat® boots through Schuh, and because of going back into the contracting game, it was decided that a new laptop was on the cards, the old Libretto now being a) fucking noisy, b) awesomely slow, and c) just not really up to scratch. Still sexy as fuck, and with great battery life, etc., but well, just not up to the job and definitely not up to the constant travelling. In fairness, it’s five (if not six) years old, and has served me damn well in that time. But still, it was time for an upgrade.

Both items arrived yesterday, so that’s near enough £1000 of stuff that’s come through the door today. When you take into account the other odds and sods that arrived for Herself as well, we’re well over that mark. And there’s still another delivery due, and I know Amazon have also sent out the Season 7 box set of West Wing too, although that probably won’t arrive ’til today. Cunts.

But it did mean that I could spend yesterday “working from home” and setting up the new laptop with all the standard stuff I need. And when it comes to setting up Firefox on a new computer now, may I take this opportunity to heartily recommend Google’s “browser sync” extension for Firefox which makes the entire process seriously painless. Yeah, I know, it means that somewhere in Google’s servers there exists a complete and comprehensive list of all my bookmarks etc., but frankly, when it means migrating everything is a matter of two or three mouseclicks, I don’t care.

Google may be Evil, but it’s also Fucking Useful.