Sunday, August 3, 2008

New Computer!!

So we have finally replaced Bec's 23 year old desktop.  Ok, it was only 8 yrs old, had about 6 Gb hard drive space, and was pretty slow.  I mean, it took 5 min to boot up and get online!  With tax free weekend (for clothes, school supplies, and computers) we decided it was time to bite the bullet and buy a sweet new computer.   

The other impetus was the laptop the state issued me died, more or less.  The monitor part was opened and closed/moved so many times that the connection went bad and thus the screen was toast!  I got our IT people to help me salvage stuff off it (plugged in a monitor), but I had backed up most stuff anyway since I knew the screen was going.  In the end, I will not be getting a state computer for home, but a docking station thingee.  

This docking station thing is essentially a laptop that hooks into a big monitor and keyboard, etc at the office and then I just shut it down, unplug 2 wires and take it home.  That is exactly what I don't want to do, take something else home a lot.  What a pain in the rear end.  I know we are under budget constraints and they don't want people having 2 computers, but it is so much easier.  I gave the purchasing lady the story about how the docking station is a pain and I'll ultimately destroy the new laptop since I have to take it everywhere.  She offered me a hard case for it.  Nice.  I gave her some grief and told her the system is stupid vs. having 2 computers and a travel drive I can stick in my pocket.  There are advantages of the docking station, but they don't outweigh the annoyances in my mind.  I might just have the laptop die in a year just to prove a point.  I think I'm a real pain to those folks, but who cares.  They are dumb.

So in the end, we bought ourselves a sweet iMac.  Yup, an Apple.  It has a billion Gb hard drive and 20 inch monitor that can been seen from any direction in the room.  Plus there is no tower, meaning all the memory is in the monitor.  We can run everything Windows on it, but all the other features it has and things it does FAR surpasses any Microsoft product out there.  It is so user friendly. I knew it would be, Apple's have always been easier to use than Windows.  This machine is awesome!  David says we're yuppies, but he just doesn't understand the beauty of this machine.  It can't run his engineering software, but it does everything else, including makes mac and cheese.  Specifically the photo software is way better than windows junk.

In the end, we got a free iTouch 8Gb iPod, free printer, paid no tax, and got Bec's Vanderbilt discount.  We also bought the Microsoft office for $15 so we can run Word, Excel, and all at home when I want to work on a paper or Powerpoint presentation.  Flawless going back and forth.

Drooling may begin:

Yes, that is a super thin keyboard.

In the end, I have my bosses old laptop, which is pretty new, that I'm keeping at home.  Take that purchasing lady!!

1 comment:

Kelly said...

Too bad they didn't throw in a free iPhone. It is a magic machine.