Don't Back Down

This morning, as I went along my merry way, the hard drive on my laptop started making some seriously strange noises. Things that you wouldn't think should come from an electronic device of any sort. Ever. Then applications stopped responding altogether. Shortly thereafter, I decided to shut down the computer for a little while and visit my wife, who was working from home.

Naturally, not much time went by before I started itching to see what was happening. So I started the computer back up and everything came up without a problem. Yippee! I took this opportunity to copy my email folders to the server so that I might be able to restore them later (a fortuitous choice, it turns out).

Perhaps ten minutes after this copying, the hard drive really started making some noise, and thinking I probably had some data that I wanted to recover, I shut it down again. After sitting for a minute or two, I started it back up, only to be greeted by the almost immediate sound of the hard drive screeching against its casing (or so I imagined).

About this time I figured I was in trouble. So I shut it down again. At this writing, I haven't turned it back on - though I plan on doing so shortly. Instead, I went out and bought a Toshiba A75-S1253 (at CompUSA, quite nicely priced after rebates).

Though I really dislike rebates, I figured that it was a resonable price, so I bought it. The only thing that might be a little questionable is the amount of RAM (just 256MB), but before making the purchase, I priced a 1GB memory stick at MemoryX, and at $150 it would fit the bill if needed. So I took the plunge.

It was surprisingly easy to remove the existing partition, reinstall Windows XP Professional, then install Office 2003 Professional as well. Within about four hours of the initial problem I was up and running to some extent. The biggest problem was that I could no longer plug my PS/2 keyboard into the laptop. So I had to go back out.

On this trip, I purchased the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, as it seemed to fit just right into my keyboard drawer (both height and width are indeed very close to the exact dimensions that I have usable). I like it, though I can't seem to regularly hit the "i" key. Most every other key has issues now and again, but I really notice that I'm leaving out the "i" quite often. I'm sure it's me.

Anyway, I really like the laptop thus far. A speedy Mobile Pentium 4 (538) processor, running at 3.2Ghz, really keeps things snappy, even at the measly 256MB of RAM that is installed. I would assume, but really don't know, that the HyperThreading contributes too. I can't wait to see what happens at 1GB and higher. But that will take a few days.

For now, I'm content with enjoying the 15.4" widescreen on the laptop itself, which incidentally outshines my 17" Dell LCD that sits next to it by a significant margin. While 1280x800 is a bit unusual for a resolution - in fact, I had to install a driver from the restore CD to get it to look right - I'm very happy with the width it gives me for viewing my inbox. I think it will be okay.