Laptop (2001-2005) - R.I.P.

Last week Tuesday, my computer died. It happened quite suddenly and unexpectedly.

For the past few months or so, the computer would shut off, or fail to cut on, if the power cord was not in a certain position. My girlfriend and I thought that there was something wrong with the power cord. Weeks before the death, we noticed a strange, electrical-type smell coming from the cord around the place where the cord connects to the computer. This was usually the case after the computer cut off all of a sudden. My girlfriend was extremely worried about this, so she started asking me to take the power cord with me to work, in case the cord ignited and set the apartment on fire or something.

Last Tuesday, we were at home, watching TV and using the internet at the same time. As I was checking the day's news, all of a sudden, the computer shuts down. As I had been doing the past few months, I fiddled with the power cord, trying to get it in a good position to allow the computer to turn on again. However, this time the computer didn't turn on at all. My girl and I decided that we needed to order a power cord pretty soon.

Before that, however, the resident computer guru in the office at my job heard about my predicament and volunteered to look at the laptop, so I brought it in. Turns out that it wasn't the power cord - that worked perfectly the whole time. The new news was much worse: the motherboard was completely fried. I guess that electrical smell I had noticed for the past month was the motherboard slowly marinating right in front of me. (Marinating... I LOVE that word. Ever since I heard OutKast's SpottieOttieDopalicious, I've tried to use it as much as I could.) Definitely bad news... a problem like that costs $600 or $700 to get fixed. I'm better off just buying a new machine. Of course, with saving up for both a trip home in December and an engagement ring and subsequent wedding, I don't exactly have $700 lying around here.

Luckily, my girl had an old laptop she wasn't using, and she let me use it. It's old, it has Windows 98, low RAM and a small hard drive. But hey, it's a computer that works, so I shouldn't be complaining. I can do email, Internet - all the things I need to do everyday. I can't play a lot of my games, though (although that's probably a good thing).