Adjusting to Yet Another Laptop

I bought a new laptop in November of last year. Used to Dells, the HP was not quite up to speed – in more ways than one.

Within 6 months, the trackpad had a hole worn in the surface, apparently built more to be a toy than a heavily used tool. It did have a nice feature or two, as well as some things which bugged me regularly, like the CD drive that was on the right side, which required that I move the Wacom tablet every time I inserted or removed a disk. A real issue when burning stacks of CDs for an event.

The computer was woefully under supplied in the resource department also. It wasted my time every day in ways I could count, and for which there was a very real cost. So we reluctantly concluded that another laptop was in order, and back to Dell we went.

The new one arrived today. A nice slot loading CD drive, discouragingly located on the right side! But at least they did not locate the earphone plugs in the region of my navel like the HP had – made recording instructional videos a bit painful! The HP did have two charming features which I was loath to part with, so I ordered them on the new one as well – the built-in webcam (easier to cut in bits for training videos), and the twin hard drives. I also ordered a new frill – the fingerprint scan lock. We shall see how THAT works out, but we do feel a need for more security given the amount of confidential information that a website designer is required to store on a computer.

I also ordered a copy of PC Mover, with the hopes that it will speed the transfer of all my STUFF between computers, and shorten the setup time. It is two hours into the massive data transfer via USB cable, and tells me it has 6 hours to go. Of course, 3 hours ago it told me it had 14 hours to go, so we can hope that it will be done before bed time tonight.

In our business, we do end up having to replace laptops about once a year, or every two years at the outset. It is our corporate policy to use laptops instead of desktops to encourage mobility. The one time killer is the switch over to the new one. Usually it takes days to finally let go of the old one. I’m typing this on the new one while the transfer goes on in the background – they discourage this kind of behavior, but I cannot do NOTHING while two computers just talk to each other. I have too much to do, including blog posts for four blogs.

So I am killing time, doing the only things I can do while it moves my files – Catching up on the writing.