Not very long ago, my desktop of seven years finally went the way of the dinosaur. Thankfully, the hard drive was not the issue; it seems like the motherboard just fried. So one hard drive enclosure later, I had our files “backed up”.  But that left me with the need for a new computer.

We have always been a two-computer family. Well, aside from Kelly’s iPad, on which she does most of her daily activities.  I have had a laptop in our bedroom for email and web browsing, and the desktop was supposed to be the “serious” machine for telecommuting if necessary, and for my own personal programming.  But I had ended up using the laptop quite often for those tasks anyway. As an example, I had the flu earlier this year, and while I was contagious yet felt well enough to do something I was working in bed.  Meanwhile, the desktop really hadn’t been used much at all in months. If I wanted to get online downstairs, I found myself taking my laptop down there to do it.

So I decided to get another laptop, ordered it online, and it came in yesterday.  This is my first foray into using Windows 8, and my initial impression is that I’m looking forward to July 29 and the free upgrade to Windows 10. But the machine itself has been performing pretty well (at least once I removed some of the trialware that came along with it). I’m not doing a whole lot of setup on it until I do the OS upgrade, but once I do, I think I can reasonably see this machine lasting me for a good long while. I love the smell of a new computer in the morning!