Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Breaking the Camel's Back

In the summer of 2005 I graduated seminary. As a graduation gift, and in preparation for world travels that would include the writing of papers and the posting of blogs, Sara bought me a Toshiba Tablet PC. It did all the things a laptop ought to do, plus it allowed me to write on the screen with a stylus. It even translated my handwriting into typed text, with great accuracy.

Seven years later, the Toshiba has been on three continents, two archipelagos, and to innumerable committee meetings. The battery has been replaced twice, the power cord once. The hard drive has been reformatted three times and repartitioned once to accommodate both Linux and Windows operating systems. Since I don't game on it or do work that requires the processing of extreme graphics or computational work, it continued to serve well in every capacity I desired.

Then the hinge cracked. Seven years of use had finally taken its toll on the weakest structural link.

Since the wireless receiver runs through the hinge and around the screen, once the hinge started to deteriorate, the wireless connection became spotty, even when I sat next to the router. And a cracked hinge made portability a real issue.

I had an inkling, however, that I was going to need a new laptop soon anyway because I found that I had to pop over to Linux any time I wanted to read and edit documents created in MS Office 2010 software. The cracked hinge was just the proverbial straw. Down went the old camel.


We're pretty sold on Toshiba for reliability and cost, so I now have a sleek wide-screen version. I can't write on the screen, but I had been using that feature much less anyway. The resolution is better and so far the speed is better, too.

Now, if I can just get past the learning curve for the Office 2010 software, I'll be all set.

~ emrys

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