A Tale of Two Computers, part 1

Once upon a time, a woman named Miss Megan bought a laptop computer. It was her first big purchase and she was oh so proud of it! She put her photos and stories on that little laptop, wrote e-mails, shopped online, and started a blog. She was part of the digital age and it felt good.

Six years later, the laptop had served her very well, but it was no longer doing all she needed it to. It ran more and more slowly with each passing month. Suddenly, it stopped recognizing any external devices such as the printer, the external hard drive, and the small USB storage device she had been using since she bought the computer. She spent some time on the phone and online tech support, but finally had to face the facts: it was time to buy a new computer.

So, she asked for a lot of advice from technology-minded friends, did quite a bit of online research, and visited several stores. Megan considered getting a desktop computer, but since she liked playing on the computer while sitting on the couch rather than at her desk, a netbook or laptop seemed the better way to go. She finally decided on a netbook, liking the idea of being able to carry it with her in her purse.

She and her mother went to Costco and bought one on a Wednesday in September (her mother had to come because Megan didn't have a Costco card), and by that night Megan had linked it with her external hard drive so that she could access the photos and other files she'd managed to retrieve from the previous computer before it failed to recognize said hard drive anymore.

The netbook worked much, MUCH faster than the old laptop and the battery worked for a lovely six hours rather than one. The new netbook had a video camera on it, and Megan and her family got a big kick out of talking with her brother Peter in Philadelphia on Skype. And, as she had suspected, Megan absolutely loved carrying the netbook around in her purse as though it were another book she was reading.

However, Megan soon realized that the small screen came with a price: she had to do a lot of scrolling, many pop-ups didn't fit in the screen, and the resolution was too small to accommodate her printer/scanner. She asked for more advice and considered buying another monitor she could connect with the netbook at home for those fancier functions.

Most unfortunately another monitor wouldn't solve the biggest problem: Internet connections were iffy on this netbook. Megan hadn't set up WiFi in her condo, most of the other nearby connections were password-protected and they all had low connectivity in her neck of the woods anyway, so the wireless option was rather useless. Worse, for some reason the netbook didn't play well with Megan's Internet connection when she physically plugged in the cord. Gah! A computer without Internet is a fairly frustrating thing, especially when Megan had just determined to write in her blog every day and often needed to work from home.

So, Megan decided she would have to return the netbook to Costco. Thank goodness they had a 90 day return policy on electronics! She resumed working on her old laptop again for awhile longer while she did more research on the kind of laptop she wanted, because even if she couldn't connect her iPod or upload photos from the camera her parents gave her for her birthday, at least the Internet on the old laptop still worked... though it took a good 45 minutes to boot up the computer and get the Internet running.

Then, on the evening of Saturday, October 17, Megan discovered that the Internet connection on her old laptop had failed. It failed again on Sunday and yet again on Monday. It seemed the poor machine was on its last legs and gasping for breath. Not having a functioning computer was not an option. It was time to go back to Costco for a new laptop. She would have to make it a priority sometime that week in between work, rehearsals, and social engagements.

To be continued after Miss Megan buys a new laptop...

Updated: Continued in A Tale of Two Computers, part 2