a tale of two laptops

those of you who know, already know, and those of you who don't are about to know: i own a laptop.

by now, it's a couple days over a year old.

it's a 15.something" widescreen emachine with an athlon xp 2200+ and 512MB RAM and a big enough HDD and integrated wireless other such bells and whistles. it's got XP pro and photoshop and cygwin and microsoft compiler and all kinds of fun software. it does everything i need.

i bought it last xmas for myself because i was going on a photography trip on new years, and figured i wanted a laptop on to which i could empty my camera's CF card, and maybe do some photo editing, all from a hotel room.

yeah, it was a flimsy excuse. the real reason was: i wanted a laptop. the price was right, too.

i had "always" wanted a laptop. my theory was that i'd take the laptop to "peaceful places" like the beach or the forest or the top of a library (my favorite getaway in college before i found my beach home) and sit down and write. well, i didn't start writing until late august, and it really had little to do with my owning a laptop. i never took the laptop out of the house to write.

until a couple weekends ago. i took it with me to a coffee shop to finish up "resurrection". that's when someone came and took out a 12" powerbook, and i realized that my 15.something" emachine was heavy and clumsy and ugly.

so i looked into powerbooks. pricey, but i hadn't blown a large chunk of cash in a while; not since silvia and rocky, i guess. just to convince myself i was "shopping" i also checked prices on small PCs. there was a 12" averatec laptop for 700 bucks (after rebates) at staples. nice.

still, the powerbook was cooler, and i sorta wanted to try out os X. sure, i'd used it before and decided it sucked big time, but that was os X.1, they're up to .3 or .4 or something now, right?

so i took me to the apple store 1 day before leaving the bay area, and found... os X.3 or .4 or whatever still sucks. barf. so forget it.

but i still wanted a small laptop. now i had a use for it! if it was lighter i know for sure now that i'd use it for writing, and i want to encourage that, right? right.

so on the 8.5+ hour drive down, i had my brother check out the averatec for me. they had 2 left at the local staples, with plenty of good reviews. so, the first night down there, i got me to staples to check it out. i'd seen it before but it was bolted to the table so i couldn't judge its weight. this time i could. but best of all was staples return policy: no questions asked, full refund. just don't smash the thing and i can basically try before i buy.

so. new plan: buy the thing, put freebsd on it, and i've got a 700 dollar 12" powerbook equivalent. sure, there's no brushed aluminum, but i've got an extra grand to dick around with.

my CC was declined. bah! (turns out they didn't like me tossing down 1k (that's 700 *after rebate*) outside my normal spending area.) fortunately, my brother was near and put it on his CC.

home we go, and find that freebsd has no support for the averatec's wireless card. no problem, i'll try linux. after about a day.5 of dicking around with linux, i realize: i fecking hate linux just as much now as when i ditched it for BSD. documentation sucks (yes, there's tons of it, but i like my documentation the same as i like my coffee: quality over quantity) and the support for my wireless card required doing things that require lots of documentation.

after a while, i realized another thing: even if i eventually get it working, i'd be stuck with linux, and i really don't have the time anymore to get to learn linux, much less KDE or gnome or whatever i ended up with.

bah.

so what did i have left? another windows laptop: small, unproven, and cheap. i had no real use for it. why did i buy it?

because it was cheap? because i could afford it? because it was kind of cool? because i was bored and it would be entertaining for a while?

i didn't like any of these reasons. what did they say about me? nothing good. ostensibly, i had bought the thing to write on. but most of my remote writing had been done on paper, and had come out just fine. i didn't remotely need a new laptop. the real reason i had gotten it: it was a distraction. pah. the same crap i was writing about in "resurrection". something to fiddle with instead of addressing my problems or doing something productive (such as writing!). i think i actually said "pah!" out loud when i realized this.

pah!

so it had to go back. it was an extravagant waste of money, something i try to avoid, unless i am extravagantly wasting money on something obscure and original, like a nice shiny la pavoni manual pump espresso machine. mmmmmmm, manual....

so back it went. i hadn't technically spent a cent on the thing (it was my bro's CC). no hassles on the return (thanks, staples!). i feel like much less of a materialistic schlub, now. whoopie. back to being smug and self-satisfied.

there's a lesson to be learned here, of course: just because i have the resources to be a weak-willed, impulse-buying, self-justifying wastrel "consumer" doesn't mean i have to.

i don't make "new year's resolutions" because nobody keeps those. i make resolutions whenever i want, as needed. and i keep them. and lately, i post them publicly to keep me honest.

resolved: not to be a boneheaded sheeple money-wasting "consumer" (ahem: for anything other than coffee products).