When my beloved Toshiba Satellite L355's screen gave out a couple of weeks ago, I uncharacteristically kept my calm. I pulled the ancient Dell Inspiron out from under the bed, poured a glass of wine and took a break from both web design and writing. A few days later when my computer guru brought my laptop to the front door and pronounced it not worth the expense of repairing, I went about setting up the dining room table to serve as my desk and connected the black-screened but still-working laptop to a monitor. It was clumsy with the lid open just enough to have access to the keyboard, but not enough to block my view of the monitor—I don't "touch type". I decided to muddle through, however, until I could afford a new laptop altogether. I knew it would be a long haul—probably many months—but oh well. I was grateful I had my computer and access to all of my data in any capacity.
It was then that I received a private message from a Facebook friend, who asked if I wouldn't mind taking her mom's Toshiba M65 (three years older than my L355) off her hands. She said it wasn't being used and that she'd be more than happy to give it to me as a "pay it forward" gift. WOW! It arrived last Monday and I've spent the entire week cleaning it out, setting it up, and transferring my files via our in-home network. My old Toshiba is now a file server and the new one is flying right along, doing all the things my old one did so well for so long. In many ways it's better than my L355. It definitely has a superior sound card and none of the controls and jacks are in the front to be bumped and jostled by one's midsection. Whoever designed that for the L355 was shortsighted indeed.
The only downside is that this "new" laptop runs Windows XP, a platform I haven't used in five years. I admit I miss Windows 7 terribly, but this has so much RAM that outside of the missing cosmetic perks, I can scarcely tell it's XP, which I started calling Winos 7 due to the fact that I poured more than a couple glasses trying to upgrade it. I spent a full two days researching the possibility of re-installing Win7 from the web (I don't have an install disk), but Microsoft has apparently made that impossible, forcing people to purchase Windows 8 instead. At first, I didn't think I'd like Win8, but after spending a mere 20 minutes on it at the store, I love it.
Time for changes!
