forgotten it.

 The idea is that I take the Dell monitor

I currently have, and then try to use that

for the workhorse desktop/laptop (whichever

we end up getting).

That would allow me to buy a new refurbished

Dell monitor at 24 inches.  How cool would

that be.

The problem comes into play when I try to

look at Dell for a CPU that will go with the

monitor.  Not easy. 

Dell has all these different stores online.

They have an outlet, then they have an

auction, then they have something else

that I think sells the machines off lease.

You have to commit to be looking for home

equipment or office equipment.  What if you

are just looking by model number.

I really like dell, but they do not make it

easy.  Same with Gateway.  I thought about

getting a refurbished Gateway since they too

are so expensive initially. Not easy.

We have been looking at length for this

computer.  Meanwhile 2 people we know

from forums have already bought things

cheap as dirt from Craigslist.  I am not

sure Craigslist is an efficient use of my

time, but these 2 diff people got screamin

deals off of Craigslist.  I have looked there

a couple times but didn’t see anything.

Guess you just have to be lucky.

Where have I been that I did not know

about this?  We’re still looking for a new

desktop or laptop.

Every Sunday we see what new ads were

in the Sunday paper, hoping for a bargain.

No luck.

Anyway, I was looking online and I saw

this thing called the Sony Vaio.  They have

a laptop yes. Lokks like a laptop.  But then

they also have this thing that’s “hybrid”, and

I guess hybrid means it’s in between a desktop

and a laptop.

You have a keyboard that looks like a Mac

keyboard as I recall.  And then you have the

monitor.  But no CPU.  The CPU is inside

the monitor. The monitor is just a tad thicker

than usual. 

I’m telling you this thing is gorgeous.  Best Buy

had it for like $768, which is more than I wanted

to spend, but given that we were probably going

to have to buy both a desktop and a laptop,

this could maybe serve as both.

You could have it in one part of the house, and

then when the sun hit there  and it got too hot,

you could just pick it up and move it.  All the

convenience of a laptop, i guess, but maybe

more functionality like a desktop.

This was the first time I had paid attention

to notice this.  And then later in the day I saw

another brand (which??) that had something

similar– just the keyboard and the thick

monitor.  This is so 21st century.  Wonder how

long this stuff has been around.

on vacation.

MaYBE hAWAII.  Maybe Vegas.

We are trying to figure out of the

hotel will have wifi or if we need to

get one of those mobile broadband

cards.  You probably will find it amazing

that we have managed to live life so far

without one of those Sprint cards for at

least one of us.

I have been learning about it. There’s

Sprint, Verizon, and somebody else.

We only need the computer part, not

anything for cell phones as our cell

phone contracts last until we are 95

years old.

The Sprint, just for computer, costs

something like $59.99 a month.  Ouch.

Is there no cheaper way?

What if we don’t like it?  We’re probably

locked into it for life also.  Or else we have

to pay 200 bucks or something to cancel,

so you might as well keep it for life.  This

stuff can be such a rip off.

will recall, and the laptop was dead.

Now get this.

I am leaving my brother’s and he drives

me to the airport.  I have to go through

security and all that.

I have the laptop in one of those gray

tubes all by itself as its supposed to

be.

Then this JERK behind me (are you

reading this, jerk?) pushes his stuff forward

even though there was no place for it

to go.  So what happens– he effectively pushes

MY LAPTOP off the table and on to the concrete

floor.  It goes crashing down. 

I turn around and give him the red ring of

death stare.  I couldn’t even speak.  He,

not even caring, says nothing.

After I make it all through security and everything,

I see that the fall has the disk insert area all out

of kilter.  So now is the laptop not only dead, it is

dismembered and hanging all apart.  This is

sad, I tell you, really sad.

So my piece of advice is, if you send your

laptop through security, always keep one

hand on that gray tub, because there could be

some  idiot behind you trying to push his

things forward even though there is no space.

that we need to replace.

Let me tell you the story. 

It was (is) an HP.  Bought it for big money

a few years ago.

Then it stopped working.  We paid for a

major overhaul and probably could have

bought a new machine for what we paid for

the repair, but what did we know.

Then I was lookin at going out of town again

and the thing was again dead.  They waid it was

the battery a year ago, so we had just replaced

the battery.  This time they said it was the cord,

which there goes another hundred buck.

Only then what.  It worked as I was preparing to

depart, but then when I got to where I was going

NOTHING.  The thing was deader than a doornail.

My brother looked up on some forums about

our model.  One guy had posted: I paid 2 thousand

dollars for a door stop.  LOL!  That would be funny

if it were not so true.

Apparently this machine has a flaw where you plug

the cord into the body of the laptop.  There are these

little prongs and the prongs break off.  It is reported

that HP denies this problem and has no way to

fix it. 

So now we can clearly see these broken prongs.

It was never the cord. The cord was fine. It’s just

that the prongs as they are now can not make

an adequate circuit around the part of the cord

that gets stuck in there.

What’s even more annoying is that we have

pictures on the laptop that we need to

retrieve.  I have no idea how to do that.

My brouther says you can take the laptop

in and they can surgically remove the

harddrive or something.  Then how we get the

pics, I don’t know.

of the world attached to it, for all the angst

we have experienced over it.

If we add another computer should we

add a laptop or a desktop?

You would think this was a pretty easy

question, but if we can only buy one or

the other, which should it be.

Ideally we would like to have both, but

that’s huge bucks. 

We need a second workhorse computer,

and we also need a laptop since our HP

piece of garbage died.  Or rather was

murdered by HP’s failure to build

quality products.  But that’s another

story.

Desktop has obvious advantages, but

so does laptop.  The biggest thing I worry

about with a laptop, though, is that running

it fulltime will result in it burning out.

Also, for either laptop or desktop, we were

looking at refurbished or scratch and dent

machines to help lower the price.

So far, there have been no honkin screamin

deals out there.

And all the product specifications are

rather confusing.  some places list

memory and such very clearly, and

other websites do not.  Considering that

I am not the smartest person out there

about this stuff, this presents something

of a problem.

One of them is that I run this monitor pretty

much 24 hours a day.  That probably has not

helped it.

Do other people turn theirs off?

If I wake up in the night I have been known

to check my email and also to look for forum

posts if I have a question outstanding.

So turning it off doesn’t seem to make much

sense at night, since I’d just be turning it on

again in a couple or in a few hours.

The other issue with this monitor, and one

reason that maybe I should let it die, is that

I have a 22 inch screen.

This was a vast improvement when I got it,

but now I am lookin to go even wider on the

screen.  that would be heaven.

It has been having problem for the last month.

At first I thought it was about to die in a big

way.  The font was fuzzy, more like a shadow

to the right side of the word.

I was freaking out.

Going online, I see that I am not the only

one with this concern.  People were saying

it was probably either the video card or

dust.

First I went to Office Max to get a can of

air.  They wanted something like 6 bucks

for air.  Give me a break.

I went nextdoor to Target, and couldn’t

find that they had any compressed air,

either in the auto section or in the

electronics section.

Being too cheap to pay 6 dollars, I went

to Walmart which was near by.

They only wanted 4something for the

compressed air.  Still a rip off (for air!)

but what can you do.

I came home and vacumed everything around

the computer and tried to suck dust out of the

inside.  Then I used the compressed air.

The computer was off, so I cannot say for sure

what contributed to the monitor’s rehabilitation.

Was it being off, was it the dust, who knows.

When I turned the computer back on it all

seemed to be working ok and the shadows

around the monitor letters were gone.

So I am guessing that it is not the video

card at this point.

The guy lives just north of Ukiah in California.  If you have

not been there, I have to tell you that it is beautiful.

Apparently he is into real estate there, and computers

(computers is how we met).

He knows quite a bit, which was good for me.

He has a place out in the country, that is visited by

wild deer.  He said they have to have not only a

high fence around their fruit trees, but also fencing

over the top because the deer are so eager to get

to the fruit.  That’d be something to see.

He said he is just a couple hours north of San

Francisco.  San Francisco is north of Silicon

Valley, the tech center area of the SF bay.

We will use this to keep people appraised of all we are doing.