Computer envy

Sunday, 2:36 pm

By Kate

Jun

24

2007

Last night, late, I delivered the lad to his Dad’s house for the remainder of the weekend. I was delighted to note that he didn’t take his laptop with him. Oh boy, hot dawg!

When I returned home, I grabbed it and then wondered...hmmm...where shall I use it?

In bed, of course. That’s the height of decadence, luxury, whatever. Didn’t last long, though. I fell asleep and the laptop did, too.

This morning I plugged the lad’s laptop into my brand shiny new Kill-A-Watt gadget. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I figured it had to be better than my desktop computer. My kill-a-watt meter said that my computer, LCD screen, and speakers burn up about 167 watts on average.

Well. The kill-a-watt meter says that the lad’s laptop consumes a modest 44-48 watts. You know, the juice it takes to run a 40 watt light bulb. That’s almost 4 times less juice than my desktop computer draws. This little laptop, a Dell Inspiron M1710 with 2.3 GHz dual processor, 2GB RAM, 17 inch screen, wireless internet, and a screamin’ video card, makes my desktop computer look like a greedy old glutton. I have serious computer envy. I love the compactness. I love the portability. I love that it gets a strong wireless signal from even the front porch. But, mainly, I want a computer that doesn’t eat electricity like it was free candy. I don’t need all the fancy gaming bells and whistles. I’d be happy with one that can manage basic word processing and Firefox surfing (I’d still use the desktop for graphics stuff). Modest needs for a laptop. Guess I’ll start looking around.