Sunday, as I was flipping through the paper looking for the Deal of the Week, I came across a really good price on a Gateway laptop at Office Depot. I ended up choosing a digital camera as the Deal insteal, simply because I had already selected a very similar laptop as a Deal in a previous week.
But as the days rolled on, I kept going back to Office Depot’s site and looking at that laptop. And thinking, hmmm… my computers are both four years old… they’re gonna have to be replaced within the year… why would I want to pass this up? So today after work, I went to the downtown Office Depot and bought it.
It’s a Gateway MX6440, with an AMD Turion 64 processor. The “Turion” designation means that the chip is optimized for laptop use (preserving battery life and such – similar to Intel’s Centrino chip), and the “64” ensures that I’ll be able to upgrade to the new version of Windows that is rumored to be coming out around the end of the year. It has a gig of RAM, and a 100 GB hard drive, with built-in wireless, four USB ports, a CD/DVD player/burner, and a 15.4″ widescreen. The price? $799 after rebate. Not bad at all.
I intend for the new laptop to replace both my current computers. I don’t see the point of having a desktop PC anymore when wireless is available all over town. So as soon as I get my data moved over to my new laptop, the old computers are outta here. Actually, that’s not true… I’ll keep the old laptop as a backup in case the new one breaks. As for the desktop PC… hmmm… maybe I’ll turn it into a Linux box or something. What I’m really looking forward to is getting rid of this crummy 19″ CRT monitor. I hate it so much that I want to take a baseball bat to it. I guess I could donate it to a school or something, but the poor kid who has to use that piece of crap will be guaranteed to need glasses after a year or so.
After I got home I realized I needed to download and install software – Firefox, ZoneAlarm, AVG Anti-Virus, WeatherBug, Google Earth. So I fired it up and got ready to install, only to find that there weren’t any wireless networks in range of my apartment that I could mooch from. Then I thought, wait a minute. The Saucer has wireless. And beer. And waitresses. So I went up there and downloaded all the essential stuff I need. Except for my data, it’s ready to go.
And as an added bonus, my external battery back from BatteryGeek will work with the new laptop, extending the 3-hour battery to a total of 8-9 hours.
I love it. As my friend Ish would say, “AWESOME AWESOME!”