Missing my Laptop

My laptop is gone. Again.

This is the third time it's been sent to the Geek Squad for the same problem. Third, not counting the time I took it there and they ordered me a new power cord, to see if that would fix it. This is the third at-least-two-week-long-period that it will be away.

It's been annoying since before Christmas, and getting worse each day. That's why I haven't been blogging as much.

The problem is the connection between the computer and the power cord, I guess. The power jack, I think the Geek Squad guy called it yesterday. So, sometimes when it's plugged in, it's charging normally. Other times, it's not. When you've got the power cord plugged in and it doesn't work right, it keeps thinking it's connected, then it thinks it's not connected, then it thinks it is, back and forth and back and forth. When it thinks it's connected, the screen is brighter. Then it thinks it's not connected and the screen gets a big dimmer. This connecting/not connecting process must take up a good bit of memory because the computer won't do much else while it's "blinking" as I've come to call it.

So you must unplug it and work frantically till the battery dies. Then you plug it in and prop it in some position that causes it to charge (if you're lucky enough to find such a position). Lately the only such position is the spot between my son's bed and the wall. So we put it there to charge, then use it till the battery dies. Or we use another computer. Trouble is, the laptop is everyone's first choice of computers.

I have to confess something. If they all were in working order, we'd have more computers than people in this house. Four people, six computers. Two of them currently don't work at all. One of those is out being fixed by the high school tech class of a friend of ours. No telling when it will be back -- when you get your computer fixed by someone for free, you can't nag them about when it will be back. Or they may not be able to fix it at all. Another is an old IBM ThinkPad that I need to tinker with. I tried to install Linux on it and got it all messed up.

Then there are the two old Dells, one of which I'm typing on now. They used to belong to the company my husband's brother works for, and we got them when they were throwing them out. They are old and don't have much memory to run most of the current stuff, but I can get Opera to work and older versions of the Microsoft Office suite of products, as long as I don't keep too many apps open at once.

Then there's my husband's computer (see the previous post about the Malware). He got it for his business and no one's allowed to use it, though I do occasionally. I hate it, though, it has Vista on it. I hate Vista.

So the laptop is the best and it will be missed. Though I was almost hoping they'd say they couldn't fix it and give us a new one. That's what happened to our last one. Service contracts at Best Buy for computers are a good deal, I definitely recommend getting one.