My laptop has been having major issues for awhile now and I’ve probably mentioned that before. It kept on rebooting every few minutes. I bought a fan for it to sit on, thinking overheating was the problem. Didn’t make any difference. I uninstalled almost everything, thinking it was a conflict of some kind. No difference again.

I finally paid a technician to look at the laptop. His recommendation – buy a new one. Apparently, the hard drive was no good anymore and fixing it would cost a couple of hundred dollars. Since it was an old machine, he thought I would be better off investing in a new one – especially since laptops are fairly inexpensive these days.

But I like that old laptop! It has a nice size screen, windows XP, an easy to use touch system, and it’s a pretty blue colour. So I decided to ask my grandson what he thought.

We were visiting my family in the states, so I took the laptop with me. Said grandson runs the family iPod, iPhone, and computer repair business at iRestore.net and is a whiz at fixing things.

The end result: Another hard drive with a much bigger capacity was installed on my laptop for much less than the original quote. You may not have a techy relative that can give you a deal, but it’s always a good idea to get a second opinion before you make another purchase. Now I’ll just keep saving for a netbook someday as well.

Technorati Tags: technical problems, computer problems, laptop repair

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This week I visited the local computer repair store with my laptop. While there, I fell in love with the Asus Eee Top touchscreen computer.  A one piece system, the entire computer is attached to the back of the flat screen monitor. It was just the neatest thing!

Large icons, easy enough for even my old eyes to see easily. Use of an onscreen keyboard if you like and the ability to touch what you want right on the screen. There’s a keyboard that can be stored behind the monitor if you find you don’t use it much and there’s little need for a mouse. A great feature because older people (and kids) have more trouble controlling the mouse than anything else when starting to use computers.

The computer monitor is an attractive LCD screen attached to a clear plastic stand. I would love to have one of these in my kitchen. It looks so sleek and modern. There’s also a handle on the back if you feel like moving it to another room (although it’s a bit heavy).

With a built-in webcam and wireless capability, the Eee Top is a great home computer for a person of any age. And it comes with Windows XP (Hooray). The price here in Canada is about $750, which is reasonable for a computer and monitor combination. I’m saving my pennies.

Technorati Tags: Asus Eee Top, touchscreen computer

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Since this blog is becoming a little hard to manage, even with the search bar and the categories, I thought I would start with some topics and list the corresponding posts related to that topic.

Let’s begin with purchasing a computer. Although not all of the following posts give specific recommendations about what to look for and how to buy a new computer, my trials and tribulations in that area may save you some of the frustration I encountered at various times.

 Buying a New Computer

Acer Aspire Laptop

Windows Vista 

Why Use Two Monitors?

Component Compatibility

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My daughter says I am a computer junkie. That may be, but this time it was for my grandaughter. She is in second year university and needs a good laptop. I saw a newspaper ad for the Acer Aspire One for a great price of only $399. So of course I had to go check it out. That model weighs less than 3 pounds and has an 8.9 inch screen, but I thought it might be okay for her.

The store ended up being sold out but there was a comparable style available for me to check the size. I realized that the screen was too small for a student to use as her main computer. I almost needed my magnifying glass to see the icons on the desktop.

The best laptop buy ended up being an Acer Aspire. With instant savings of $200, the laptop only cost me $599 plus tax. Since my grandaughter is in an arts program, a mac computer would probably have been the best one for her, but it was way more than my budget allowed. The Acer laptop has 3 G of memory and a 250 GB hard drive, so it should meet her needs for school. And it looks nice too, even has a built-in webcam – a nice plus since I see her in person so seldom.

Bottom line: grandaughter is all excited about her new laptop, I’m in her good books, saved some money, and I got to feed my computer addiction all in one shot. Not bad.

Technorati Tags: Acer Aspire laptop, student computer

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Why would I need a fan for my laptop, you ask? Welcome to the rant of the day.

I have a Toshiba laptop which I like very much. I like the 17 inch screen. I like the big hard drive and having enough memory. I like that it has Windows XP instead of Vista (that I really like). What I don’t like is the fact that the last while it has started shutting itself off. Not fun when you are in the middle of writing something, but I have learned to save my work often.

I decided that it must be overheating, so I trotted my little self over to my favourite computer store (I won’t mention their name because I have applied to work there twice now with no success – and yes, they do have other old people on staff). Anyway, I bought myself a special fan that sits under the laptop and plugs into a USB port. My son has one and it works well for him. It was on sale, so cost me about $40. Reasonable if it worked. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

The fan does cool my laptop and keeps it from overheating, but it is still determined to shut down at regular intervals. Next stop – the computer repair store. Can nothing in my computer life go smoothly, or is there no such thing in all of geekdom?

Technorati Tags: laptop, Toshiba, external laptop fan, overheating laptop

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