Ram upgrades are easy and cheap and noticeable. Post the bios info and the serial number so the nerds can tell you what to do to it.

(I say 'bios info' as though I know what I'm talking about... But I might mean something else. The info you get when you interrupt the boot sequence, is what I'm after here.)... it tells you how much memory you have, etc....

My MIL wants me to buy her a refurbed Dell laptop on Ebay from the official Dell refurb store. They sell about 30 a day.

I've promised to buy one and load basic software on it (ninite!) and send it to her. I'm a little nervous. I don't want to be responsible if it sucks.

I don't like the idea of buying refurbished electronics because I'm.....ummm...a snob? I don't know. I have a fear of them dying on me.

If you buy her one, make sure it has an Intel processor. AMD in a Dell is a guarantee it will suck and make your family gatherings more awkward.

Thanks for the advice. I won an auction for a Latitude E6410 Intel i5 2.67 Ghz with 4GB RAM and a modest 160GB hard drive. Windows 7.

It was rated in very good shape ("A") and was just within her budget at $296.

I expect she'll be happy.

My Lenovo T400 Notebook Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz 3GB Memory 160GB HDD Integrated Graphics 14.0" Windows 7 Home Premium came yesterday. I'm looking forward to quicker, problem free performance. Now I just have to install all the stuff I'm used to and need. My photos and music are on a (very full) 80 gig external hard drive. I hope that'll be just a plug in kind of operation.

If you use iTunes for your music, you'll have to rebuild the library. If you use Picasa for your pictures, you'll have to rebuild your library. As for Picasa, I have some tips about how to use a helper program with Picasa, Picasa Starter, that I've found extremely useful for managing a collection of pictures that does not reside on the local machine.

In any case, your music (*.mp3 files) and your pictures (*.jpg files) are likely still on your external drive.

Looks just like my son's, spex. I got it from some mook at a pawn shop. He's brutal on electronic devices, but that thing has stood the beating. You'll be happy, I think.

Thanks for the tip

I'm looking forward to it

My new puter is a Lenovo thingy. We're still coming to terms with one another

Download resistanceisfutile.exe and click on Run.

I have a new one for work.

FYI they fucked up the trackpad on new models. You can push on it to click like on Apple laptops, but it has a cheap feel to it. No separate mouse buttons, right-click is now touch lightly with two separate fingers.

Change is bad.

I dunno, I kind of like that this doesn't crash every three seconds, take a stone age to start up or have a hard disk error thingy. Change is annoying, but so are teenagers and yet we still love them. just.