RIP Mertensia

[hedda62]

Well, I am now without a laptop once again, as my outdated Dell refuses to take a charge or run on the charger. Everything is backed up, as I saw this coming, so now I just have to make a decision and spend money I don't want to. I've got two fics-in-progress sitting on Gdrive, where I can't see pecking at them on this little thing, but if I get desperate there are other computers in the house.

Yes, two: the Lewis, and I got bitten by the last PoI ep and started typing (cease with the triumphant crowing, N). It was a good, tensely written ep, and not the least thing I appreciated about it was the absolutely blasé acceptance of same-sex marriage. "Here is the number, Mr Reese, and here is her wife." No commentary, no jokes, not even the good-natured snarking of WC, just fact. Okay, it's not Our Heroes getting married, but they hardly could anyway, being dead.

So, there we are. Maybe some typing today will be in order. And some shopping. I admit to a strong temptation to name the new machine "The Machine" (and perhaps rechristen the phone Florence) but it's a touch ambitious for a wee laptop. There is "Harold," of course. (Not having "Mr Reese" sitting on my lap, thank you.)

Comments

[philomytha]

They never seem to last long, laptops. Mine average about four years, and this one is creaking through its old age at present, not aided by the fact that Philomythulus likes to wallop it now and then when he gets fed up with life. There's an interesting permanent blue line on the screen from one such wallop, and it hasn't held a charge for years; I can only use it plugged in. By contrast, Mr P's desktop has lasted about ten years, though admittedly he has a tendency to stick new bits inside it now and then and buy new monitors and so forth as and when they wear out, so it may be like grandfather's heirloom axe that's had six new heads and four handles but is somehow still the same axe.

For traditional sitting-on-lap behaviour, you could name the laptop Zap, as in the cat? Mine always get animal names - this one is Norbert, and his predecessor was Hedwig.

[hedda62]

Well, I have sold my soul to Apple and got a MacBook Air, which I suspect will end up named Ariel. Ours tend to be servants and ships and such, though Mertensia was an exception.

[bloomingpol]

Congratulations. Chip has an Air as well, I guess he'd had enough with the iPad experiment, I'll give him a lot of credit for trying it for so long, not something I have ever been tempted by, even having won one in our public radio summer raffle a couple years ago.

[hedda62]

I do like it so far, although there were some issues last night with the wireless, and then I had this moment of realization that ha, there was no ethernet port in the skinny little thing, so no joy there (but there is a connector thingy we can get, and I'll need an external DVD/CD player too). And it will take me a while to vanquish years of Windows-think and figure out how to make what should be easy stuff happen (really, it is only intuitive if you're trained that way, sorry). But it's sleek and pretty and it has a battery that actually works, so yay.

[bloomingpol]

I moved to Macs after starting out with PCs, but that was years ago now [yikes]. And remember, Ben can use a Mac, even if I reteach much of it over and over (if he isn't interested, he forgets, ADD). I must say that the limits of the Air sound like a challenge, and I suspect that it will not be my first choice when I have to get a new laptop in the next couple of years. But we will see.