Left Hand Karma - Portfolio and Blog of a Freelance Web Developer living, working and playing in New York City

I’ve been working off my wonderful girlfriend’s Macbook for the last month and decided it was time to invest in one of my own. I knew I needed a PC both for development and my budget, but I have to admit the sleek and stylish Mac had grown on me. I feel like I acquired a new taste for something, just like how I learned to like beer. The more you force yourself to drink it the better it becomes and before you know it you are addicted.

I have been out of the computer spec realm for a while so I began researching for the latest and greatest at online shops like Newegg, comparing to others like Tigerdirect. I had purchased my 52″ Samsung LCD from Newegg and was impressed with their selection and prices, but these computer prices took me by surprise. I was dumbfounded that I could get a complete computer system, which included a 24″ monitor, for $600. Do I do that over a laptop? Where would I put it? I remembered the broken iMac that coworker had given to me and so I decided to have the best of both worlds. I concluded that I would use both the iMac and a new laptop. I called the Apple store to approve the system board replacement and bought a refurbished laptop which Tigerdirect was offering for $580. All and all I  spent about $1200.

The laptop arrived today and it looks brand new! Perfect for a desktop replacement or if Dad needs a laptop and you can afford this as a Father’s Day present.  The specs are pretty impressive for the price, only drawback that I can see for now is being stuck with Windows Vista until Windows 7 comes out. Man is it buggy. I tried to log on to our wireless network and ended up reconfiguring it with some Vista Voodoo Magic, which then disabled it for the Mac. Dumb. To make matters worse, once I figured out how to manually connect to a network and both laptops were running, the HP was ridiculously slow. Every click seemed like it broke something new and I was constantly berated with approval messages while having to wait 15 seconds for IE to load. Trying to find take out on Menupages was horrendous, my girlfriend had to log on to her Macbook to find us a place. What good is a 64bit processor and 4GB of RAM when I’m left at the starting line. Strike 1.

We are traveling up to the Finger Lakes this weekend where two of my good high school friends are getting married, so after we devoured our South American feast, we sat side by side each with our respective laptops, searching Google maps for a place near the wedding to stay. I had previously booked a hotel the night of the wedding on Saturday, but we decided to travel up the day before and use her miles for a free stay. If only IE would load. And not freeze. She was already on Mapquest looking for directions to a hotel she found with her Citi rewards card while I was alt-ctrl-deleting everything to save my life. Strike 2.

“This place has a king room and is only 20 minutes away. Look at the directions.”

“I want to cry right now…Hey – that’s the place I already booked!”

Turns out it was and after calling we got a free upgrade from the Double room I had reserved to a King Featured to match the rewards room we were looking at. Gotta love the power of a female voice and a Priority Club membership.

It took a while but I managed to uninstall all the bundled crap and get the updates and after a couple of reboots the computer is running great. Looking forward to see what it can do.