The first week back to work after the holiday trip was reasonably calm; but after being off work for ten days and quite a few days during November, as well, four days seemed like a very long week. I'm getting back into the swing of things, though.
Turtle and I have been chipping away at the task of getting our new laptops set up the way each of us like things. Unlike Bret's new baby, ours aren't the fanciest or the fastest of Dell's line (or anyone else's), but they're nearly as fast as the four-year-old machine I use for my daily development tasks at work. That's a huge improvement over Turtle's old Toshiba, which had a pronounced tendency to lock up while trying to load just the antivirus software.
Aside from the speed increase and the ability run applications that were unavailable to us with the old Win98 machine, the most pleasant surprise is how much more sensitive the internal wireless card seems to be than the Linksys wireless-g card we were using on the old laptop. Add to that the relative simplicity of connecting to a new wireless network under WinXP using Dell's wireless connection manager, and life is going to be much easier for Turtle. One of the main reasons for her getting a new laptop was so that she could use it from her rented office space and... oh... the sort of upscale coffee shops where she tends to meet with prospective clients and collaborators. She never could get the old laptop to connect, because the process was just too fiddly.
For my part, I'm quickly becoming spoiled by the wide, crisp LCD display that at the same time is sharper and brighter than my flat screen monitor at home and handles wide content better than my cathode ray monitor at work. The Synaptics pointing device was a bit awkward, at first—I was used to the old laptop's "nubbin", which I could use without moving my fingers from the home position—but I'm getting used to it. Enabling the scrolling gestures and modifying the hot spots to my own preferences helped.
The new machine's battery actually holds a charge, and with that comes previously unexplored mobility. Unless it's during the day when I'm at work, you'll never know where I might be blogging from. This has been quite handy, this weekend. We've kicked off the new year for the Ride of Silence™, which means that I've had a torrent of e-mails from event organizers confirming their information. Each of these must then be update in the database and activated for display on the site. I've been hauling the laptop with me wherever I go in the house so I can keep working. Sweet.
And the heat generated by the thing keeps my lap warm.
2 comments:
You actually USE the touchpad? That's the first thing I disabled on my current lappy, and will be the first task I undertake on the new one.
Of course, laptop for me just means, "has a battery for when the lights go out." Since I can't walk and chew gum at the same time -- just ask a few walls I've gotten to know far too intimately -- computing and, well, lounging are out of the question.
2 days until the new baby arrives -- and definitely not the top of the line, but a hyooooooooooooooge step over my current artifact, which like Turtle's machine seems to stagger a bit under the weight of virus protection.
An ulterior motive for posting -- I'm on the lookout for a decent used tandem bike, and am scouring the usual suspects (eBay, craigslist, etc.), but if you run across a candidate anywhere along the way, let me know.
Eric: I have been known to refer to the room as The Library, so I'll accept that answer. No knives, however. Just the thought...
Bret: Most of the time, if I'm using a laptop it's actually on my lap. I've heard people say they just use the mouse on their legs or something, but I have better luck just using the touchpad.
I can't recall having seen any tandems on the block lately, but I do see them posted for sale from time to time. I'll keep an eye peeled. (Which is only a figure of speech and, therefore, much less painful than it sounds.)
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