This year, my old laptop had been giving signs that it was giving up the ghost. It took longer to start up and had more freezes. But these issues were intermittent, and I wasn't sure that they were aggravating enough to justify a new laptop.
A month ago, at the end of Music Week at Lutheridge, I couldn't close the laptop without a horrible sound. A hinge had broken. I was able to open and close it a few more times, but clearly, it was about to be a much less portable computer.
My first inclination was to fix the broken hinge, which isn't as easy as you would think. I had visions of bringing it to some sort of old-fashioned shop, the kind that probably doesn't exist anymore, the kind of place that would have just the kind of hinge I needed and the expertise to install it right then and there. No, I would have to leave my laptop for several days of analysis and diagnosis. It would likely cost at least $75.00 for the diagnosis alone, and then more for the repair.
For that much money, I could buy a new laptop, so that's what I did. I had been using my old laptop for about 4 years, so it wasn't likely to last a lot more years.
So far, the transition to the new laptop has been smooth, but I still have a bit of work to do. Even though most of my documents seem stored to the cloud, I still want to back up all my data from the old laptop onto an external drive and then also load them to the new laptop. When I first started using my old laptop in 2018, I was unsure of whether or not I wanted to use the cloud, so some of my data may not be there. And I'm aware that the cloud relies on someone else, probably several someone elses, to keep a server (or 2 or 3) up and running.
I am still exploring whether or not the services that I had for my old laptop, like Office 365 and McAfee security software, have downloaded to be used on the new machine. It's confusing because the new laptop came with a trial subscription, so until that runs out in a few days, I can't be sure. I've already paid for these services which are supposed to cover several different machines, so I don't want to pay for them again.
It's that kind of aggravation, or potential aggravation, that keeps me from buying new technology as frequently as other people do. I am not anti-technology, as some people assume. But I am tired of devoting so much time to technology, the updating, the troubleshooting, the backing up and running scans, the overall neediness of the technology.
And each updated laptop comes with a loss. My first laptop had a port where I could connect the old flat screen that we had for a desk top, which meant a much bigger picture. That feature is gone, as is the DVD/CD drive of the last laptop. It does make for a slightly less heavy laptop, but also a slightly less functional one.
That said, I am loving my new laptop. So far, it's been one week, and I have yet to get the message, "Google Chrome is not responding." Hurrah. So far, I open the laptop and it, too, opens, ready for me to get going. It holds a battery charge much longer than the last laptop ever did, and it recharges more quickly too. It's not running so hot that I fear it might warp the wood of the antique desk.
Let me forgive myself for waiting so long. Let me be happy that I took action before the laptop situation reached a crisis point.
No comments:
Post a Comment