Days of Shades

Lu-Tze*, my (until recently) trusty Toshiba laptop, is having power difficulty, which is to say that there isn't any. There's power at the end of the cord, but no lights turn on when you push the button.

4th Dimension would charge me almost $200 to take it apart. I was planning on building a desktop this year and was looking at about $1000. Spending 20% of that on a possible solution doesn't seem terribly brilliant, financially, so I'm considering building the new comp SOON (I'd have to lend myself money, but I could do it), and then trying to get Lu-Tze up later as a back-up, when I have time/money/inclination. I might be able to borrow Erik's laptop in the interim.

Of course, doing enough research to spec parts and build a machine when one has no home net access is problematic. I'm considering cutting time and confusion down by buying a bare-bones machine and adding my own video-card and supah ram - anyone ever gone the bare-bone route?

*My laptop's namesake is anywhere between 800 and several thousand years old. I wish that the name bestowed the longevity and spryness. Of course, Lu-Tze is fictional, as well, and I'm glad that characteristic was not bestowed on my computer.

After a flurry of indecision, a disapointing lack of credit history*, and a flurry of credit card confusion, my order from Toshiba is now listed as 'being packed.' By this they mean (the nice phone lady tells my father), that all of the various parts that make the laptop a laptop and not a paperweight are being packed into the laptop carcasse by nice underpaid people in China.

Well, she didn't put it quite like that.

I have a bit over a week to wait while the mysterious denizens of the Middle Kingdom take a sad, lonely Satelite M40 case and configure it with an SXGA+ screen, 128 Mb nVidia card, and gigawig of Ram...then it shall wing it's way across the ocean TO ME!

In all likelyhood it will arrive just after we leave for Turkey day break, obviating the obvious reason why I bought it as quickly as I did (besides the free shipping, free printer/scanner, free router, free bag deal...), and making me have to call the one benighted soul in Olympia who hasn't left for the food fest, so they can rescue it off of my porch and get it safely out of the rain.

*My credit history, by the by, is perfect. In fact, I tend to pay off my debts before the scheduled pay off date. It is also SHORT, which happens if you manage to survive for awhile with no debt at all. Also, my most recent credit history is with Ye Old Parental Savings'n'Loan, which, while a marvelous and nominally interest free** institution, does not have the official pomp nessecary for, say, $1900 laptop purchases.

**There will be no collection of monetary interest. Guilt, dishes, and chores are assesed by the loan-granting institution.