My new laptop

Monday, 1:50 pm

By Kate

Nov

19

2007

Christmas will come a little early to my house this year. I bought myself a laptop last night and, with a little luck, it will arrive on my doorstep early next week. This isn’t the laptop that I was looking at and drooling over. Nay. It’s better. Except it isn’t the color I’d have preferred (Ruby Red), but Jet Black will do just fine.

It’s a Dell and it’s pre-owned and refurbished and it has a scratch and a small dent on it. Since it’s not my Primary computer, I am willing to take the chance on a less than perfect refurbished one—I’ve owned two refurbished Apple computers in the past and they turned out to be terrific computers. So, for the astonishing price of $649, I got myself a sweet little machine that has Windows Vista Home Premium (meh!), 2GB of RAM, a dual core 2.2 GHz processor, 160 GB hard drive, a DVD/RW (with double layer write capability) disk drive, a souped up 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS video card, a Sound Blaster Extreme Audio sound card, and an integrated 2.0 mega pixel webcam (not that I’ll ever use that).

I’m taking a wild guess that the kid who owned it, before me, dropped it and sent it back under Dell’s accident protection plan. It’s a risk, but one I’m willing to take. The warranty is excellent, so I should have no difficulty returning it if the laptop turns out to be a total lemon. It’ll probably be fine, scratch and dent nothwithstanding.

And, I believe, under the rules of the 90% project, I can qualify and count this as a used purchase at 10% of the purchase price - toward my consumer goods allowance.

And then...watch my electricity use drop like a rock.

I hope they ship it SOON!