And it rules with powers on loan from space aliens! My old lappie had a hard drive smackdown death rattle thing going on so I’ve been without for a few weeks. This is harder beans than anyone would credit because the desktop is in the kitchen and it’s DAMNED COLD in there, especially since we’ve had this Arctic Blast ™ weather going on–I wrap up in my bankie but it still means cold foots and fingers whenever I want a protracted surfing spree. Add to that the fact that I can’t cuddle my sweetie while watching a DVD and settling arguments about movies by googline and IMDBing the answers and it all adds up to just not comfy as it could be, dammit!
So I went looking at a Dell notebook–found out that the web site is impenetrably, annoyingly difficult to navigate and nearly content free, the online chat people can’t type, the phone clones can’t talk and have no idea what I’m asking them, so I hie on down to the mall to see the Kiosk People. After going over a few things on the website we establish that the laptop they’re offering for 530.00 actually can NOT be configured with the CPU/FSB stats the web site promises, let alone for that price. So I spend a few moments explaining “bait and switch” and “false advertising” and we escape from the mall before passing a Cinnabon, which would have been catastrophic in another way, but would probably have made me a little less cranky about going to a mall for NOTHING.
Next stop was the local budget computer place which sometimes has good deals on refurbs and suchlike, but they were all spendy and I just had a hankering for something NEW… my birthday is coming up, and I just scored a deal rolling all my miscellaneous debts into a lower interest equity line of credit and I have been living very sparely for quite some time–even down to cancelling DirecTV after four years. Yeah, I’ll be paying it off for a while, but dammit what ELSE am I working my butt off for, anyway?
So I gave in to the tiny shopping karma fairy voice in my head with its incessant whine “go to Fry’s! You know you want to–Fry’s is the place!” I was reluctant to do so, because the last time I went there (to get a great loss leader video card) I was completely denied since they’d sold all five of the bloody things they had available hours before I got there and the whole experience was a disappointing mess from beginning to end.
But the weather was flipping gorgeous today and I was in a mood to go travelling a bit, so Fry’s it was–after all, maybe I could pick up the extended, uncut DVD of “Sin City” at a good price, the drive shouldn’t be a total waste. Got into the laptop aisle and heavenly choirs began belting out showtunes as an unearthly glow surrounded this one nifty looking 'puter in the middle of the row. I checked the price–six hundred bucks out the door, no mail in rebates, sweet! The more I looked this bad boy over, the better I liked it–AMD Turion, nice… 1.6 Ghz processor, sweet… 64 bit system? Huh! 256MB onboard, decent, 40GB HD, check… 15.4 in WXGA display, gorgeous… Onboard 802.11g, mandatory… USB out the wazoo, cool… Three way card reader and infrared, neat! Okay, I’m sold, get me outta here!
Got it home, and out of the box onto the Internet in eight minutes flat–not at all shabby (ships with original WinBloze XP Home disc with product key, always nice to have), the keyboard is incredibly easy to use with an excellent feel to the keys, the display is incredible, runs at 1280 x 800 and is perfectly crisp and readable, I’ve got fifteen things running at once and it’s happy campers, hasn’t even been optimized yet and it’s zooming right along–I’m spanking my monkey in acquisitive glee at the wonderfulness of it all… and then I get the to the best part of the punchline…
I get online to Outpost.com to see what they have the system listed for, and lo and behold what do I see but this! Online this thing lists for a cool GRAND! Now I’m REALLY stoked…
So anybody in Portland OR who wants a phat laptop–hie yourself down to Wilsonville to Mecca and get this sweet baby. Oh, and for all the people at Fry’s who think this thing isn’t upgradable, according to the user’s manual the chip is NOT hardwired, there are TWO memory slots capable of taking up to 1GB each, and the DVD ROM/CR-RW is modular and can be replaced with a burner if you want.
Sale ends February 21… 
Oh, and “Sin City” is marked down to 31.44… 