endellion.me.uk

My New Laptop

My old laptop was slowly falling to pieces. First the CD writer died, followed by DVD functionality, and at last CD reading wasn't on the agenda anymore either. The letter 'e' stopped working which was a harbinger for the entire keyboard to become unstuck. Correction, actually; become stuck more like. Some letters were typing themselves. This meant taking the keyboard connector out, and using an external keyboard. Then the power connector on the motherboard became intermittent. A total strip-down revealed no observable problem, but solved the issue for a bit. Battery life (originally four hours) went from three minutes to zero overnight, i.e. it was not possible anymore to unplug the computer and quickly move it to another place. At the end, no power at all was forthcoming from the power brick, though it still worked with the car charger. But with the touchpad conked out now as well, this wasn't exactly a portable computer anymore!

Time for a new one, then. I already had my eye on a HP tx1250ea for a while after seeing it in the Staples catalogue, but at £ 750 it seemed a little steep considering every other laptop costs around the £ 300 mark. Then again, these cheaper ones were all 15" and the tx-series is 12"

That's Progress