I've been talking about getting a new computer for some time while. Well, it's here!
A friend suggested that it might be worth looking at a laptop rather than a PC, which would give me some flexibility and allow me to move around the house and even outside the house should our internet pack up again. There was talk of docks and monitors... and I'm not so out of touch with the computing world that I don't know what they are. However, my first suggestion of a cheap laptop that I spotted on Amazon was greeted with derision. It would not do the job I want it to do.
The laptops that had the oomph to run everything I need it to were priced in the region of £1,200-1,500, so it looked like I was going to have to give the idea a hard pass. My budget wouldn't stretch that far — it's only thanks to having had regular work for the past year that I can even think of buying a new computer, made necessary by the grinding noises coming from the fan inside my PC, which tells me it isn't going to last forever.
I still hadn't made any decision by the time Black Friday came and went, ditto the Boxing Day sales, and we were into the January sales before I even gave it another thought. This was prompted by another friend who had recently bought a couple of cheap laptops second-hand and fixed them up. He came up with a set of specs that a laptop would need to meet if it were to be any good.
With that information, I was able to find a model that was a fit and one that was being offered barely used for a very good discount. There was even an option to make an offer, which I did... so I now have a laptop valued at around £1,650 that cost me a third of the price.
Since it arrived I have turned it on, linked it to the internet... at which point there was a Windows update to download. I then turned it off. I'm now waiting for heads far smarter than mine to tell me how to move all the stuff off the computer I'm writing this on onto the laptop. If I remember correctly from the last time I did this, it is going to take at least a day, and I might be fiddling with programme updates and drivers for some while, so if I go quiet all of a sudden, don't panic.
Once I know the machine works, I'll start thinking about buying a dock (through which I can connect all my external hard drives) and a new widescreen monitor. If I can get reasonable deals on those, I'm hoping that I can then afford to have my PC looked at and the fan replaced. That'll give me a back-up should I need one.
The other bit of excitement has been completing a huge block of scanning, leaving me with an afternoon's worth before I can switch to the next task of cleaning up the scans that I have. I'm writing this on Thursday morning because I'm hoping that, once I have the scans done, I can then spend Friday doing a back-up of my computer ahead of trying to get the laptop up and running. Belt and braces!
Hopefully I'll have more good news next week.
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