quick update on the laptop front

I'm checking out of the hotel today and moving over to Mechelle's abode this afternoon. Meantime, I'll be walking over to the library with my gear and waiting for her there; she'll pick me up around 4PM.

I purchased the laptop for $200 plus tax-- a total of $216. The price wasn't $275 as I'd been told; it was $229 plus tax, so haggling down to $200 didn't take much effort.

The computer didn't come with much, not even a charger, so I walked over to a Radio Shack and bought a few extras-- a carrying case, a WiFi attachment, a mouse, and a network cord; I then moved to the Staples next door and bought some software: a scaled-down version of MS Office and Photoshop Elements 6.

The guy who helped me at Radio Shack printed out a writeup about my laptop, which is a 2002 Dell Inspiron with freshly installed Windows XP.

"How much did you pay for this?" the guy asked when I told him about the pawnshop.

"$200 plus tax," I said.

He frowned: "You should've gone for $150. You know that that pawnshop guy didn't pay more than $50 for this." Ouch.

I walked away from Radio Shack and Staples, armed with my computer and new supplies, but a few hundred dollars poorer. Had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant (again, kinda disappointing) and went back to the motel to do as much setup as I could.

The good news: despite the USB1 ports on the computer, the USB2 attachments (mouse, WiFi) seem to work just fine. Also, I successfully installed MS Office, which must mean that the CD-ROM is in good order.

The bad news: Photoshop Elements 6 has system requirements that proved to be too much for the Dell. I'm going to have to take the program back and find an older version. (My family might have one, actually; I could ask them to expedite it to me.)

So I'm packing and moving over to Whitman's campus to wait for Mechelle. The Whitman College Penrose Library is listed as a WiFi hotspot, information I'll shortly be putting to the test. It's also got power sockets, which is important since the laptop's battery is ancient and needs to be replaced.

Gotta run. More news as it happens.


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