My laptop computer, a HP Pavilion dv6, recently died after five years of use. It would no longer boot up and only made a clicking sound when I pushed the start button. After researching the problem, I learned that the hard drive was stuck and that it could be possible to take apart the hard drive, unstick it, and salvage the information. My efforts at disassembling the hard drive only resulted in stripping the screws. A friend of my son’s later tried to unstick the hard drive and to salvage the information; unfortunately, the hard drive was too scratched to retrieve my files.
It occurred to me in November that time had passed since I had last backed up my files. Over Thanksgiving break, I downloaded all of my pictures, music, and documents to an external hard drive. I had a feeling that my laptop could fail and could wipe out many of my files. I ended up losing only a month of pictures and documents.
I should have realized sooner that my HP desktop was about to fail because about six months ago it refused to open Office 2010 after uploading and installing a monthly update from Microsoft. It took a hundred dollars and two phone sessions with technicians at Microsoft to get my Office 2010 working again. I learned later that I could upload Office 2013 for $10.00 because of an agreement that one of my institutions has with Microsoft.
Until I upgrade, my wife has lent me her Dell laptop. My desktop is running Vista and doesn’t have the memory to work with D2L and Blackboard, two learning management systems that I am using for my online classes. The keyboard of her laptop is positioned farther away from the edge and makes it difficult for me to type on, so I have had to add an external keyboard. Nonetheless, with six gigs of RAM, my wife's Dell is more capable of performing multiple tasks than my old HP was. My HP used to freeze sometimes when I was using Word2013 and playing music with Foobar2000. I often had to boot up my old desktop to run Foobar2000.
During one of our ice storms about ten years ago, I was typing up my grading comments when I started hearing the neighborhood transformers popping. This occasion was three laptops ago. Our electricity went off soon after the nearest transformer went out. That loss of power made no difference in my working because I was able to continue for so long as the laptop battery remained charged. I have since decided that although a laptop has merits during those times when the power goes off, when I am bedridden, or when I need to take my work somewhere else, my best bet is to replace my laptop by getting a good desktop with two screens. A desktop with two large screens will make it easier to see my work and to perform multiple tasks at the same time.
I used to admire the six screens that Gordon Gekko had in his London office in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Surplus Exchange, a local business in Kansas City that sells used computer parts and discarded desks, could easily supply my needs, but I cannot ever see myself using more than two screens at the same time.
My wife has since decided that she needs to start backing up more of her own files because of my loss of documents and pictures.
It was a sad moment when I added my HP laptop to the pile of E-waste at the local recycling center.
