Follow-up to Yesterday's Vitrtual Toys Entry
Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Saturday, September 13, 2008
I have a new real toy.
My birthday is soon, and Paul asked if I wanted a new laptop. Oooh. Well, I'd been thinking about one. Mine is too old to run some of the software I'd like to run, but it's good enough to do basic photo editing and storage on the road as well as Internet connectivity. It would be nice to have something small and light that would run Photoshop.
So we went to Fry's to look at a Toshiba that was on sale. The salesguy immediately tried to talk us out of that model and steered us toward a Fujitsu Lifebook.It may have been tough, but it was fug ugly. I don't need a system that wins design awards (sorry, Apple), but there's something about carrying around a heavy laptop that looks like something from ten years ago that just doesn't do it for me. I don't need construction site rugged.
Then we looked at an HP. Well, the salesman told us we didn't want that. Obviously a piece of crap. Chris has a Compaq (HP) that he loves. He even decided to keep Vista on it rather than downgrade to XP or dual boot. The guy turned up his nose and walked off.
All in all we had three salesmen talk to us. Don't mean to be sexist, but there were no women on the sales floor in the laptop department that night. Another salesman tried to steer us to the Lifebook. Now, it may be a very good computer, but when multiple commissioned salespeople start to steer us in the direction of a particular product, I suspect that they're getting a little somethng extra off of the sale. I used to be a commissioned electronics salesperson back in the dark ages. I know about these things.
We finally settled on a Toshiba U400 series laptop. It's small and light and has a webcam built in. One feature is facial recognition software. It's suppoed to recognize the face and log you in. We'll see if that works. It's not a bad little laptop. And, I was pleased to discover that it has the new AMD "Puma" chipset. But no one even wanted to talk about that laptop to us. Must not have been any incentive for them to sell it.
Of course, once we decided on a laptop, it took forever to flag someone down. Then he vanished into the back room for ages. I think he had to walk to Oklahoma to get the box. Of course, he tried to sell us on all sorts of crap we didn't need. No, I am NOT buying Norton. Yes, I have a Bluetooth dongle. Yes, I have a case. Yes, one that will fit it. And so on.
So, I'll be reporting on it further soon. And there will be pictures, as soon as I get it all set up. First I have to go through all the process of Windows updates, clearing out the unwanted crapware, and doing some basic customization. And yeah, I just want to play with it!
More later. Time to start lunch. I've had some tandoori chicken marinating for a couple of hours. It should be ready to cook now.
Tags: Technology, Toys
Filed under: Technology Toys
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