I So Can't Afford This, but I Need This (Day 185)

The last computer I purchased (well, actually my mother purchased for me) was one I used when I went back to school to study East Asian studies and history. I was double-enrolled in two different schools, working on a new bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies (taking Japanese language at the same time), a master's degree in US history , and I was working full time and teaching as an adjunct.

Anyhow, my old HP, a Pavillion ZD7000 was the very first consumer-available 17 inch laptop, so I purchased it (well, again, my mother purchased it). As a software engineer, I always bought the very tip-top of the line computer so that it would last as long as possible. The ZD7000 was a powerful, but, frankly, awful computer. They just didn't know how to make a laptop that big at the time. It had two fans that continually ran HARD in order to keep it cool--the computer's exhaust felt like a hair dryer (that's no exaggeration). If the back of it wasn't propped up, it would overheat and just completely call it quits. Putting it on my lap was an invitation to sweat so hard that I would dehydrate within an hour. The battery was more like a capacitor and would run for maybe 20 minutes, tops, but standard output under load was about 10 minutes at the most. This thing was so horrible that there was finally a class-action lawsuit over the whole mess and HP awarded me (well, my mother) and other owners really dumb stuff to compensate for their horrible mistakes with the ZD7000.

Anyhow, enough is just enough, and I was borrowing Noey's new Dell Inspiron so much that it was bascially turning into my laptop. Her old one, which was still more powerful than my HP, was out on loan to a friend, so I had no options (irony? while I'm sitting here typing this, her friend just brought the other computer back... ). I had to do my lesson plans and sample programs on a computer that wouldn't take 10 minutes (no exaggeration) to boot up.

Solution? I ordered a refurblished Dell Inspiron 1721. What sucks is that is's a low-end consumer computer, so this will mark the first time I haven't bought the best computer I possibly could (I would have loved to had gotten an Alienware laptop). So, it was $659, which wasn't bad, but Dell added tax (!!) and I had to get it shipped in two days in order to teach my intro to programming class the next Tuesday so the total price is quite a bit more than what you see here. Bad part is that I haven't gotten paid by either of my two new jobs, so I don't actually have the money to pay this credit card bill as of this moment.