RIP HP

Our not so beloved HP laptop has died. The battery was crapping out for a while, it only held a charge for about 10 minutes. That didn't really matter much since we didn't need to have it unplugged so we just left it plugged in. Problem fixed. And cheap!

I went to bed on Monday night with the computer in it's normal spot on the couch closed and woke up to find it in it's normal spot but with it open! I turned it on and it wouldn't charge...I checked all the connections and still not charging and showing unplugged.

CRAP!

By this time the computer was dead.

CRAP!

Luckily in November we had bought a desktop so the boys could do school work so I still had computer access. Good thing because I cannot get through my day without computer access!

Jerry looked at the computer. He looked at the charger/cord. Nothing was working. It was D.E.A.D.

CRAP!

So we decided we need to buy a new laptop but we don't want to spend a lot of money. I found the receipt from the HP, we bought it in November of 2008, it's barely 2 years old! That's not acceptable at all! The laptop we had prior to that one was an HP and it lasted quite a bit longer, maybe close to 5 years but the charger and battery are what went on that one too. Plus they run very, very hot. So hot that you could not actually put the computer on your lap even with some sort of laptop tray under it. This last one was also having a lot of other problems, we were using less then 1/2 the memory but it ran very very slowly, then it was so hot that it would freeze up after being on for less then 20 minutes. For being barely 2 years old that's not acceptable. So we decided to avoid HP at all costs. We did look into replacing the cord and battery...battery is between $125 and $150 and the cord would be between $60 and $75...by the time we would have paid for both of those and to have someone look at, diagnose and fix the computer for at least $150 it would have nearly paid for the new computer...might as well buy a new computer with a warranty and new operating system and all the new bells and whistles.

We did some research and Asus seems to get very good reviews. I asked some family members and they have Asus' and they are very happy with them. You get a lot more memory and RAM for a lot less money. So we decided on an Asus laptop. The really good news is that the lower part of the cord fits into the lower part of the cord for the HP and it reset the old cord somehow so we were able to charge the old laptop. That's good because now we can get anything off the old laptop that we want to. We may even be able to sell the old laptop for a couple of bucks (emphasis on *couple*) or maybe donate it to be refurbished and used at a hospital for visiting families or something or just use it as a spare.

We also decided to do our own recovery disks this time instead of paying Best Buy to make them, it took about an hour and a half but saved us $99...worth it.

Luckily I save all my pictures on an external hard drive as a precaution for just such an event...a computer crapping out with no warning. I also save anything I think may be important on jump drives (thumb drives). So even if we cannot get onto the old laptop it's no real loss. I would like to get the music I have on the media player transferred to a jump drive so I don't have to re-convert it but that would only cost me more time, not money.