I always catch the glare of finger prints on my laptop screen. It bothers me. It especially bothers me because of the fact that my laptop computer screen is of the glossy finish type. If there is a finger print or smudge, it is very obvious.
Bad Habit?
If I notice a smudge on my screen, I clean it immediately. If I do not clean the smudge, I will sit and think about it until it is clean.
Just don’t touch the screen
It’s not that hard. When pointing at things on the screen, there is no need to drag your finger tip over the screen itself.
Maybe this is just something that I have to get used to.
If it’s not a major inconvenience, it can be very worthwhile to keep an old computer or two around. I’m not necessarily talking about ancient computers. I’m talking about stuff like keeping the last computer that you replaced with your newest computer. And maybe the other computer before that.
Why?
I like to think that even if I buy a new computer, the old one can serve some dedicated or more specific purpose.
For example: An old laptop that I have serves as a drum machine. It runs a copy of Propellerheads Reason 2.5 (which is very lightweight on resources, by the way). I use it only as a drum machine and synthesizer. Nothing else.
The computer works great for that purpose, even though it is over 5 years old.
I’ve been pretty reckless with my new laptop. It’s a little Toshiba machine, dual core Pentium CPU, 13 inch screen.
Very portable.
It’s so portable that I am finding myself to be very careless while “porting” it.
I often find myself walking with the laptop computer in one hand and the power supply in the front pocket of my hooded sweatshirt, for example. If I was to drop the machine, BAM! $600 down the drain, probably. I don’t want to speculate and create an omen.
I’ve been putting a lot of thought into buying a cheap yet serviceable laptop backpack for my laptop computer. I don’t want to sacrifice portability too much. It needs to be a pretty accessible and portable backpack.
Backpack Requirements
I want the backpack to be able to do the following:
Hold a laptop
Hold the laptop computer power supply
Make both the laptop and power supply easily accessible
Hold a camera, cell phone, wallet, notepad, pencil/pen and some other stupid crap that I probably don’t need to carry around at all
Cost $20 or less
Backpack Actualities
I think my last bullet point relegates me to getting a backpack due to a:
Garage sale
Target/Kmart/Walmart/Some other supertmart “sale”
Good pawn shop find
Theft (I don’t condone theft, but it’s a realistic option to some)
eBay special find
I’ll find one somehow. It’ll probably be at Kmart. I shoulda just went there instead of even typing out this blog post.
Backpacks of time past
I used to have a decent laptop backpack. It even had a nice shoulder strap, which made it very versatile. But one of the cats pissed on it, so much for that backpack.
Am I asking too much in my search for a decent, cheap laptop backpack?
I’ve recently been carrying my laptop computer around without using a case of any sorts. This might not be the best idea.
Backpacks of times past
I used to have a canvas backpack that worked pretty good for toting around my laptop computer. I borrowed that one out to get it fixed. The backpack had a strap that was about to fall off, so I wanted to get that repaired. I haven’t got it back yet.
I then had a laptop case. It was a decent laptop case. It fell apart too. I had to stop using it.
So, now every morning that I go to the office I am carrying my laptop in one hand and the power supply in the other. That is it.
I hope I don’t drop the laptop. That could be a bad thing.
I need to get a new backpack. This is too much of a risk.
I’ve been using Windows Vista for a couple months on a laptop. This has been my first experience with Vista. I have been pretty happy with the operating system overall, but there is one nagging thing I repeatedly get annoyed with.
Windows Vista, at least on my laptop machine, can’t copy or move files at a fast rate in many instances. I frequently have to wait 5-10 minutes to extract the files from an approximately 100k zip file or similar. That is pretty rediculous. I’m actually typing this as I wait for a some files to copy for a web site installation, and it’s taking way to long for that copy to execute.
I’ve been able to find information about turning off certain indexing services on Vista to speed up this kinda stuff. I had a problem with not being able to copy files from an XP machine over a network to this Vista machine when I first got this laptop. I did some research on Google and found that some people were eliminating this issue by disabling some indexing services on their macine. I tried it and it worked, but only for the network transfers. It didn’t fix my local file moving and copying issues. The local file system operations are still way to slow for my liking.
It’s quicker to copy stuff to a USB pen drive and walk between the machines! As with the guy above, I can get 500kb/s+ downloading from the Internet, so what’s with Vista copying?
Good stuff. There’s tons of stuff out there on the Internet similar to this.
After this 12.5 minute unzipping process of a 100k file ends I’ll probably not try this again tonight. I’m going to probably just call it quits and go to the office tomorrow to use my XP machine to install my plugins and finish the web site installation. It’s so much faster.
