Right now I’m typing on my new laptop. My old laptop, meanwhile, is chugging through the MoveMe process. Unfortunately the laptop magically turned itself off after about an hour, so I’ve had to start again. As I write this, it’s gone through about 28 minutes so far and it has 6 hours 45 minutes left to go. It needs to move 16GB of stuff and it’s up to 625MB packaged so far. It will be worth it once it’s done…hopefully it will work out okay in the morning. Meanwhile I am doing math homework and watching an episode of Modern Marvels about Star Trek technology - pretty much everybody agrees that the Trek tech they’d like to have the most is the transporter. Back to math homework now!

Added: It just did it again. Now I’ve started over again. *headdesk*

Added: Okay. So after the third time MoveMe caused the computer to randomly shut down, I gave up on it and tried PCmover instead. They’re both owned by the same company now anyway, so I figured I could get a refund for MoveMe (which was $40) pretty easily. I paid $50 for PCmover and it looked real shiny and cool, but it just did the same damn thing. I am so frustrated and pissed. I should just burn all my documents and stuff to a CD, copy down which programs I want to install on the new one, and do it manually. Because this is unbelievable and it fucking sucks!

So the other day…I bought a new laptop. I ordered it from Dell, with whom my school has a discount program, and with whom I’ve been happy for many years. I currently use a Dell Inspiron 1150, which is quite serviceable but is starting to fall apart in little ways. It also has a crappy processor, which is why I couldn’t run SP2 worth a damn. So I bought a new one. Here’s the specs.

I have finally gotten my laptop for work and gotten situated in my new cube. There’s computer equipment all over the place, and I don’t have a trash can, but it’s okay. Actually, I have virtually no amenities; when someone needed me to jot down a note she had to bring by a pad and pen! Fortunately she left them here, which is nice.

Obviously this laptop was freshly re-imaged before I got it, so I am starting from scratch. I had saved my entire Firefox profile - actually, I saved a very old copy, oh well - and I was planning to run Portable Firefox from my USB stick, but it was so slow as to be unusable, so I just installed regular Firefox to the C: drive. (Apparently I cannot install into C:\Program Files due to permissions.) I also grabbed kitten wallpaper to replace the green field thing that XP always comes with.

A box came in the mail today, but it wasn’t for me so I’m still waiting for my Sidekick. Instead I’ve spent much of the evening playing with the laptop we bought from :MK:. She and her husband bought a brand-new Dell for her to take to Oxford (she spent the Fall 2004 semester there) but she’s not really a computer person so it sat untouched after she came back on December 8th. A couple of days ago she asked if we would want to buy it from her, and of course I said yes! We paid at least 25% off what it cost new, so that’s a substantial discount for us. A decided that I would have :MK:’s laptop, and she would use the one we’ve been sharing. She’s eager for me to get my files off the old one so she can wipe it and start over - it’s had some problems for a long time and wouldn’t mind being formatted.

I’m now attempting to configure it - fortunately I realized quickly that I should create my own user account rather than messing with hers! This is evidence that I’m not too familiar with using XP. C has an account for me on his computer because I wanted to use it when we were up there over the holidays, but that’s all I’ve used it. My other laptop has Win98 and at work we use Win2k. I’m discovering all the different ways to configure XP - the first thing I did, of course, was download Firefox! But now I’m wondering what else to do with it. I changed my user picture already, and I set the colors to the Silver style, but what else can I do? I know there are websites with XP themes; can anybody recommend a good site for that? What else can I do with it?

I do have a CD with installers, so I won’t have to download everything over dialup. (The CD has Firefox 0.9, which is why I downloaded 1.0 tonight.) I think I’m not going to install Trillian for now, because I haven’t been signing onto anything but MSN lately and the computer came with Windows Messenger. If I feel the need to talk to people on another chat service, I can always install Trillian at a later date. My trusted LeechFTP is on hold too, as I’ve downloaded the fireFTP extension and I’m going to give that a trial run.

What I’m really looking forward to is gaming on this laptop. The old one didn’t have enough space to run both Sims and the Vacation add-on, and the desktop had enough space but it ran horribly slowly. I’m also thinking of getting one of the CSI games, but I suspect most of my other gaming will be done on the PS2. But I’ve really been wanting to get back into Sims, and CSI isn’t available on consoles, so I’ll finally be able to play those! Oh, and I have a CD burner now, which excites me even more.

One word of caution though: I’m not looking for tips like “install Linux” or “XP sucks.” It’s so much better than what I’ve been using at home that I am thrilled by this upgrade, and I won’t be the only person using this computer so Linux isn’t really an option (the other users are Windows-only).

Added: Holy cow, this thing has built-in wireless! I’m connected to a neighbor’s network right now! (A is online using the other laptop and the phone line.) I was going to install my PC-MCIA wireless network card so I could connect from my company’s office tomorrow, but I realized I didn’t have to…it was already there! Wow.

I need a new laptop. Mine is running Win98, which sucks balls, and only has 64mb of RAM so I can’t upgrade my OS. (No, switching to Linux is not currently an option.)

So I’m thinking about going the eBay route. I noticed by searching for “laptops” that there seem to be a lot of people selling them, and pretty cheaply too. You can get a good laptop on eBay for $350-600. But I know nothing about this. Does anybody have experience buying electronics on eBay? How can I make sure I’m buying from a reputable seller? Most of the stuff I’ve bought on eBay has been trinkety and I knew I wouldn’t have problems with it, but this is a big purchase and I’d like to be safe.