Surprise Purchase

I am writing to you today on my brand-new, fresh-out-of-the-box laptop! I wasn't really planning on buying a new one at the moment, but my old one basically blew a gasket last night. It's needed to be plugged-in full time for about a year now, and last night it started not recognizing that it was even plugged in at all. Sigh. I have to pray that I can get it to work long enough in tiny increments that I can get all our stuff off of it. We do have another one in the house, but it's DH's work laptop, so I'm not comfortable loading all our financial stuff on there, not to mention our photos, etc.

My new baby is an HP, and you can't tell from the pictures on the website, but the insides light up when it's on! The keyboard is shiny, and the whole thing looks a little like bronze-ish stainless steel. Very cool. Plus, it's smaller than my last one, and a lot smaller than DH's thing. It's not as small as a netbook, but it's definitely one of the smaller laptops. My old one is OLD, as in about 6 years old, and couldn't even run most of the new software that's coming out. I couldn't use any games, and it was s-o s-l-o-w. It's nice to have something new, even if we weren't really ready to buy it.

Since when, though, did buying a computer become a stressor akin to buying a freakin' car?! Best Buy is the most obnoxious place to get something like this, ever!!! Maybe everywhere else is just as bad, but ARGH. We went to the one in town first, which was literally out of stock on every. single. one. that we asked about. Why can't they just put a sticker on the ones that they no longer have in stock? And why were they out of so many things in the first place?! I told them how frustrated I was, and was told that I could order one online and have it delivered to the store, but they didn't know when it would get there. I asked if they could call the store in the next shopping area, half an hour away, and see if they had any, which they did, and there were, but the stores no longer hold any merchandise for each other, even for HALF AN HOUR. So, instead of being able to drive down there tomorrow, I had to immediately hop into the car and drive all the way down there to make sure I could actually have one. There, I was confronted with a guy I will call with Salesman Zit. Why, oh why, does BB have to be so literal when they speak of their Geek Squad? This guy practically drooled when he talked, and couldn't have been more condescending. I wanted to grab him and say, 'hello, you're an HOURLY EMPLOYEE AT BEST BUY, smartypants', but I didn't want to take a chance of rupturing one of his zits. Seriously, Proactiv would have had a field day with this poor specimine. I got rid of him, and found another guy, who was slightly older (read: probably a whopping 25) and less obnoxious, who finally found me something in stock. Still, of the three laptops on my list to look for, this was the only one they had. WTF?

AND, did you know that Windows no longer comes standard on machines? Oh, sure, you get a VERSION of Windows, but it's a TRIAL version that will expire in three months! What's up with that?! I like Bill Gates, and I love that he's so generous with his foundation, but maybe he could ask me for a donation rather than raping my wallet repeatedly at a chain store. That is SO uncool.

I will be spending the next few days trying to unload my old computer and get this one set up with all the links and files I had on my old one. Sigh. If you hear screaming and rending of teeth, that would be me.