Death of a dear friend...

It is with great sadness that I must announce to you all that my dear friend laptop gave up the ghost on May 7, 2009. We have been nearly inseparable companions since December 2003 when I brought him home from Costco and took him out of the box.

After over 5 years of faithful companionship my friend laptop started overheating and making some very loud and scary noises about 3 weeks ago. I knew it was a matter of time. I knew I should back up all my data. I knew he was dying. But in a fit of procrastination and denial I didn't bother to back my data up.

Then on Wednesday night I tried to wake my friend up from sleep to find just a blank screen staring at me. I held down the little button to force a reboot, another black screen stared at me and finally I see the white words telling me Windows failed to shut down properly - whew - Choose Last Known Good Configuration and run with it. But... it won't load? Uhoh!

So I push the button again and turn the machine off - hoping that a little time to cool down and he will get his wits about him again and boot up. I have my portable hard drive waiting to grab that data the minute I can get it to load.

I try again in the morning, and again in the evening. It's official when my laptop starts screaming (REEEEEEE REEEEEEE REEEEEE is the sound) that the hard drive is in serious trouble.

My data? Well it's my fault. I know better than to procrastinate but I was sure I had more time! I need more time!

So now I'm shopping around - I am coveting a sweet little netbook. Leaning toward the Acer 10.1" Netbook in Ruby Red - I <3 Red! I have to order it - no one seems to carry that size/color in stock. I want it NOW and don't want to wait until sometime next week for my prize. Not to mention that in our current situation I probably should just live with the very capable and fast desktop I also currently own and forego the laptop alltogether but I don't want to.