Upgrade!

 Finally back to business! Um, I don't think I can call this a business. Back to.... hobby-ness? Hobbiness? Can I create words? Anyway... Our ancient Windows XP desktop PC was unable to load the Blogspot website interface anymore. So... What to do? I've grown fond of this silly hobby of taking pictures of fun things and sharing them, so I wanted to continue to do it. I guess we could have used the phone itself to both take pictures and post them, but I had no intention of typing this much text on the phone's "keyboard screen thingy". So I guess we needed a new computer.

  

Rather than just replace the desktop PC "tower" with a newer one, we decided to go with a laptop. My friend has never really had his own laptop before. So it might be fun to explore what that's like. We're supposed to cover this with stickers, right?

Let's back it up to the "hunt" since there is so much variety available, where do you start? A trip to the store to get an idea about sizes, features, prices... Looks like a 14" screen was big enough, but not too large to carry around. If we want a Laptop, it's going to be carried around. Where? I don't know...

Hmm... this one has stats similar to our phone, but is a lot more expensive. It was odd to compare the performance to our phone's computer. We wanted one that was at least as good. Otherwise, why carry it around when we already have something better in our pocket? Also... I think I need to figure out how to rotate these photos again... it did it automatically before.

The thought of "getting one just to have one", and making it as cheap as possible, was an option we considered. But that felt a little like throwing money away. My friend has come a long way from the times he was more "tight" with his money. And sometimes you deserve nice things for yourself, so go ahead and splurge!

Once we figured out the size we wanted, a thankfully brief internet search for "good laptops at good prices" lead to a review article and ultimately to a link to the Dell page where we saw this one. Looked like it had a bunch of good specs and ports and stuff, and the amazing sale price helped push us to the "buy" button. We didn't feel like circling around the pool a bunch, just jump in already! And yes, it's only been a week or so and I think it's already obsolete.

You realize Amazon has spoiled everybody when you seriously wait the full two weeks for somebody else to ship something. 14 whole days. Actually arrived a day early on a Sunday which was cool because the weather forecast called for heavy rain on Monday. Which would have been awful! Also, I'll note that this box just screams "HEY EVERYBODY IT'S A NEW LAPTOP!" and they just lean this against my apartment door?

The Upgrade story doesn't end there... You see, the new laptop was not connecting to our home network. The only message we could see was something like "That's an old network and might be dangerously unsecure to use, do you want to connect anyway?" and it still refused to connect. A call to Verizon verified we needed this ancient box replaced.

Here's the other side of the wall. This thing has been plugged in here forever and I'm still not super-clear on what this does, except run the Verizon network tech stuff whatever. Last week when we posted that batch of pictures, we used our phone as a "mobile hot spot" but later found out that doesn't logically flow through the home router like we thought, but strait up though our mobile data limits. So this thing has got to go!

It took them a whole 'nother week to get the Techs out here to replace this. It was a slow day so there were two people helping. Look at how small this thing is! The other good news is that the old one had a dead battery they never replaced, and every hour or two it would BEEP! The new ones don't have that so it will never beep. We learned to ignore the other beeps, I wonder if we'll even notice it's gone.

I'm not too thrilled about this sloppy cord just hanging here, waiting to be snagged on something. I might have to figure something out to get it out of the way...

Here's the new router! I forgot to take a picture of the old one. it was half as big and had a lot of blinking lights on it. Much like re-setting all of the clocks after Daylight Saving Time, it was a chore to re-connect everything... except the phone. When I went to take a picture of the back panel, for the password, my phone recognized a QR code there and automatically connected! Like magic! The Xbox and Switch and stuff needed the password. And I guess you can tell by this post, the new laptop is working just fine!