Not-so-old faithful

[pbray]

I'm grateful that my laptop survived long enough to allow me to complete THE FIRST BETRAYAL, but I think it's time to face reality and look at getting a new computer.

The current laptop is only three years and eight months old, but it's already had two hard drive replacements, the current hard drive is acting wonky, and the CDROM burner will no longer format new CDs so I'm reduced to reusing old CDs.

Now is a good time to get the new computer and make the switch from Windows 98SE to a new platform before I get deeply involved in the new book.

I may also upgrade my printer. My current printer is an HP inkjet that I purchased back in 1997 to celebrate the release of my first book. By today's standards it's a tad slow, with a paper tray that holds just under 100 sheets, and it takes around two and a half hours to print a manuscript.

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Comments

Your New Laptop

[(Anonymous)]

I just had to upgrade my laptop this past winter too. Advice is like...well you know...however, I chose to go for the DVD/CD burner combo drive rather than the CD Burner. DVD's hold more information AND I think it is the new mode for the future. I was afraid of the dreaded incompatibility issue. My five year old laptop had that problem without a CD burner and with new computers not having the 3.5" drives at all. My files would no longer fit neatly onto a 3.5" disk so I was reaching that "Dangerously near the trapped on the computer for good" point. I had a look through several consumer reports when I was researching laptops. Oh, you will get Windows XP will ye nil ye nowadays. grin. Still, I don't like working on the new HP quite as well as the old Compaq. Sigh. Actually touching the computer before buying was helpful to me (I sent that DELL back). Good luck with your new laptop. Cheers, JD She.

Re: Your New Laptop

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice. I love how we can read ancient clay tablets and papyri that are thousands of years old, but the electronic age has made our data fragile and we have to keep migrating from one storage medium to another. Floppy disks and CDs can degrade over time, so a computer upgrade is also a good time to copy my old files to new media to make sure they are still readable.