slouching towards upgrades

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Well I was wandering around in Best Buy the other day,... or as I like to refer to it "the money pit where no one knows anything at all about what they sell" and I decided on the spot to fix my busted old Dell Inspiron 3800. For those of you who know me this computer and I have been through a lot, we were on a starcruiser... er... Coast Guard Cutter together and my little Dell has take quite a beating.  My chances of making it into a successful portable are long gone thanks to an obnoxious key failure that cancels out the 8, I, K and , keys and a busted modem. My USB port, thats right I used the singular, is workable, but the platic protector/divider fell out and I have to precariousy balance my USB plug just to get it to work. Oh and a recent fall thanks to a coworker has left me with an inoperable CD ROM Drive.
Step one, fix the port problem.
One semi-busted USB port is definately not enough to plug in my USB mouse, my USB Cable Modem and my USB printer so rather than suffer through the annoyance of unplugging one to use another I decided to spring for a $60 USB 2.0 4 port card. Scrounging around the house I found a salvageable CRT screen and keyboard and I attached them to my laptop.  I threw out the CD rom drive and replaced it with my 31/4 floppy drive (for writing) with the hope of being able to upgrade to a Combo drive or a DVD r/w drive later. Oh and I need to snag a little more memory.

the result is that my computer while less portable is now more useful and I can postphone buying a new laptop for at least another year.

Some of you may question my need/use/desire for a laptop, but I can assure you that since I use my computer primarily for wrinting and secondarily for searching the web I dont require a huge amount of memory/ hard drive space or customability (yes I know its not a proper word)

I think my next one will be an ultra cheep laptop paired with a more powerful desktop machine. Im flirting with the idea of a Mac duo, maybe an Ibook and a G4/5 Power Mac.  Which some of you may also question. My goal with said machines is to start my Desktop publishing buisness since the new Quark xpress is better on Mac it makes good sense.  Plus I definately want an IPOD one day, or the next generation of one anyway.

Anyway Im just happy to have a working keyboard and mouse right now.

TTFN
Jeff

[Entsuropi]

Buy an X-Box!

Or just buy an old laptop from dabs.com

[Mistress of Darkness]

Also, I know you can get a USB hub (gives you four USB ports from one) for about $9, but you really have to search. I found mine at EBC Computing.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

The only difference there Darkie, is that he got a 2.0 4 port hub. And I'm sure the one you got is what, 1.0 or 1.1 or whatever. And I guess if he really needs a computer that badly, but doesn't want to buy a new one right now, then sure this seems palpable.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Yeah, its jury rigged all to heck and back, but it works much better now than it used to....

I pondered a USB 1.0 Hub, but it didnt seem worth it, most stuff is usb 2 now and the stuff that isnt works fine with a USB 2 port...

Now all I need is a DVD R/W drive for my computer and Im back in buisness.....
anyone got a spare that fits in a dell inspirion 3800....?

I'll give you a copy of Nobilis.

[Mistress of Darkness]

Well . . . there's that.

In reality I'm just really jealous. My machine is ancient.

[Entsuropi]

What kind of sick values do you operate on man? A DVD drive instead of Nobilis?!

Wierdo.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Having recently read most all of Nobilis, I'm wondering why you love it so much Entropy. I mean, there are some occasional neat ideas, and it's not like the mechanics are sloppy, but it's not something you'd bring home from a bar without a lot of beer first.

Or you're exceptionally lonely

[Entsuropi]

I like Nobilis, WoD and Cthulhu - all games full of atmosphere and mood. Maybe thats not your cup of tea.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I doubt Tea is Saint Ehlers cuppa tea.  Atmosphere and mood are things he feels confident enough to pull off on his own. He doesnt like WOD because it feels overdone and tacky (he and I disagree about Vampire but both agree Wraith is a super cool game).

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I like rules that make sense. I can do the rest. But if they're going to do a setting, they could at least avoid excessive vagaries and self contradictions and have clear reasons for things instead of just saying "they're MYSTERIOUS!"