Lappy's Demise

Last Thursday I felt my laptop was slowing down a bit so as it had been powered on for over a week, I decided to power it off for a few minutes.

When I powered it up, or tried to, it gave out a long beep almost straight away followed by 2 shorter beeps. I'm not sure what that would be in morse code terms but in laptop terms, I knew it wasn't good. The screen remained black with not a flicker of life. Rats.

Actually I said something much ruder but 'rats' will do here.

So it came up into Windows, I think, as I HEARD it go through the process. I'd no choice but to power it off and try again, ever the optimist. Same result.

It was either the screen or the graphics chip on the motherboard and both of those on a laptop mean death.

Thankfully I keep all my photos, music and tv/movies on an external drive so there is little data I NEED from the laptop but it's still a pain in the butt and in the wallet and I could do with neither. The hard drive is fine so when I get a new laptop, whatever I need can be copied across.

But now I have decisions to make; for a short time I thought about getting a tablet and forgetting about a replacement laptop altogether. Sadly it soon dawned on me that tablets are no substitutes for computers as for one thing, they don't have USB ports so I couldn't access all my external drive files. That alone would be a show stopper.

Then I thought about getting a laptop AND a tablet and that's still my plan today. I was thinking of getting a cheap basic laptop and a top of the range non Apple tablet to have the best of both worlds so as I had no experience of tablets at all, I asked Daphne if I could borrow her iPad for a few days and she said of course.

That's why I'm typing this on it right now and it's also why I know I don't want one for myself !!!

My smartphone experience has been with Android based phones and I've been more that happy with that system. I don't like Apple products and the iPad is no exception. Each to their own and that is just my opinion as always.

At the moment I'm leaning towards a Nexus 10 as I want a screen big enough for watching movies when I'm travelling as I'd take the tablet and leave the laptop at home. As for the choice of laptop, I just can't bring myself to think in terms of 'cheap' and as I do a lot of photo and video editing, cheap just won't cut it. For that reason I've even thought about getting a desktop instead but no, I want the portability of a laptop so will stick with that.

So that's the situation right now. I'll do my usual time consuming searches and review checks before making my choices but that will be in conflict with my 'want them now' attitude when it comes to buying new electronic devices.

I'd like to thank Daphne for the loan of her iPad and although I don't want one, it is a nice piece of kit. Being an iPad2, I think many of the 'cons' will have been sorted with later incarnations but as with all Apple products, the price alone puts me off.

Until I get the new kit, my blogs may be short and sweet as typing on a smartphone doesn't lend itself to long blog posts !!!