Monday, January 21, 2008

I'll Take Things I Hate for $200 Alex

What are broken laptops?

That is correct!

Yeah, so I dropped my wife's old laptop today as I was walking it over to my network hub and the screen smacked into the entertainment cabinet and bye-bye laptop. Whoopsie. The thing was on it's way out to begin with. You couldn't leave it on and closed for long periods of time without it never coming back up; the blue function key thingy stopped working making it impossible to adjust the brightness; the wireless card kept insisting that it was in ad-hoc mode when I had set it to infrastructure, making it unusable and finally, the wireless adapter I had been using as a patchwork solution stopped working after I updated the firmware on the router. Granted, that wasn't the laptop's fault, but it is related.

The problem is that I've gotten quite used to having a laptop downstairs for all of my gaming needs. Yes, we have a laptop for home, but many times, while I'm gaming, Linda is using it for email, or looking up things, and I don't want to bogart the laptop just because I'm too cheap to shell out 15 bucks for the Mass Effect strategy guide.

With the GameShark reviews providing a steady stream of "fun money" I can certainly swing a low end laptop, but I'm loathe to drop such a large chunk of money on something that doesn't recreate a Star Wars vehicle with plastic bricks. I'm also not real big on the idea of having to keep another piece of computer equipment maintained just so that I can better cheat at video games. Oh the conundrums we face in this, the digital age!

I'm sure I'll figure something out sooner or later. Either that or I'll go back to running into the other room every time I need to look something up or print out online strategy guides ten pages at a time. The real question is which will win in the end, my laziness or my frugality.

Fight!

2 comments:

Greg said...

You must have another device around capable of either browsing the net or viewing a txt file, right? Twere it me, I'd use either the browser on the Wii or view the txt file on a pda. Of course, I keep my old PCs when I upgrade, so I've got two right in my den. One for games, one for walkthroughs.

Brandon Cackowski-Schnell said...

If I use the Wii, I have to keep switching back and forth between the image on the 360, and the image on the Wii. Plus, what of the times I need guides for the Wii?

I could try the PSP, however it's such a pain in the arse to enter in addresses. Blechy!

Bottom line is that I'm lazy and I enjoy complaining. ;)