Laptop Blues

Little Kat said his laptop is having problems. The thing won't connect to the Internet. I took a look and found some serious problems. Most of the services won't start up because they depend on something that has not started up. We tried to locate this missing unstarted dependency without luck.

I told Little Kat we could back up his data and see whether we could restore his laptop to the factory default settings. Momoko thought I could buy myself a new laptop, then let Little Kat use mine. At first I thought that was a bad idea. Then I took a look at the Sunday ads. Best Buy had a Dell laptop on sale for $350. It had 4G RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and a 15.6 inch display.

Tonight Little Kat and I try to scope out the laptop at the store. It was crowded. I asked a buy unloaded some boxes to help us out. He told us most of the low cost laptops were sold out. The only one for $350 had a small screen and no numeric keypad. The best low cost laptop Little Kat found for me cost $479. Too much.

Now we are at home regrouping.

Computer Parts

This past week Little Kat's laptop overheated. We need this laptop working 24 x 7. Little Kat uses it for his homework. He used to have some external computer fans which kept the laptop cool. Little Kat said they broke.

Today we took a trip to Five and Below. They had a bunch of laptop cooling fans for $5. Little Kat chose one of them. We will see if it keeps his computer cool. Then Little Kat talked me into going to Best Buy. We went in search of computer parts to build a computer ourselves.

Everything seemed a bit expensive. They did not have any motherboards or CPUs. A guy who worked they told us they did not cater to computer builders like us. He referred us to New Egg on the web. We priced a bunch of hardware. Total cost would have been $320 without the CPU or motherboard. But we found some cool stuff for that price. Next stop is New Egg.

First in Line

Yesterday we got the ads for the Sunday paper a day early. Best Buy had a laptop on sale for $279. There had to be a catch. I asked a couple people to look at the ad. The only sneaky thing was that it seemed associated with a more expensive package.

So I went down to Best Buy. I asked whether I could just buy the laptop. The sales guy said yes. I asked whether the laptop had wireless and a CD-ROM. He said yes too. They were first available at 11:00am on Sunday. I went to sleep thinking I would get up early and get in line before the store opened.

This morning Momoko got up before me. She came along to Best Buy with me. There were a lot of people in the parking lot. But there was only one dude in front of the store. I took Momoko, and we started the line right in front of the entry doors at 10:50am. I was the first dude into the store when the store opened. I made a bee line to the computer section.

The sales guy tried to sell me some extended warranty. I was not having it. It worked. I bought a laptop for $279 plus tax. Yee haw. I am using the laptop to compose this blog right now. Still need to install a lot of software and transfer over my files and settings. But I am on my way. My computer at home is the oldest of all that we own. It is working but who knoes for how long. I am a happy laptop user now.

Microwave Blues

Yesterday Kit Kat and Little Kat told me our microwave broke. I had them do some checks, and indeed it seemed dead.

Last night I stayed up late studying for a test I am going to take in two weeks. So I did not want to get out of bed this morning.

Mamma Kat kept telling me we needed to go buy a new microwave. I don't know why I need to go. You just select one and pick it up. Besides, we have a working microwave in the basement.

After being pulled out of bed this morning, we went to Best Buy to get the microwave. I like them for electronics. However I was disturbed to find out the local Best Buy was out of business. Ouch. Luckily there was a Home Depot next door that was happy to sell us a microwave and some other goodies for the house.