Nay for faithful old laptop on its last legs. :(

[bluetemplar187]

So I have a Dell Vostro 3400 I got in the summer of 2010.  It is by FAR my favorite laptop I've ever owned...and it's dying.  I've had to switch to tap-to-click on the touchpad because the mouse buttons are both dead, the up button on the keyboard has broken (which has created some difficulties on NP games :P) and now there's a thing with the plastic around the monitor loosening a bit.  The good news is I have a backup laptop in waiting I bought on sale a few years ago but I really don't like the keyboard on it and some other stuff.  I'm about to start a new job (yay!) so I'm looking to really research and invest a good amount of dosh in a new machine that'll be my next long-term baby, but almost all laptops now have the really thin style of keyboard I hate.  Does anyone know what I'm talking about when I say I like my keys to have some depth to them?  I like the tactile feedback of knowing I've pressed in the key and with the really small thin machines you can't really find that.  I need a laptop, a desktop won't work for me, so that doesn't work.  =[

 

I'm reasonably confident I'll find a machine that works for me and boy will I be happy once I do; I won't need to worry about overheats, or the machine dying on me or anything like that, but it hurts.  I'm a man with a disability, and technology has always been a huge part of my life and how I connect to the world and what I can do in it.  My laptop is like a friend.  I humanize my technology.  So in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm losing an old friend I love very much, and it''s difficult to handle.

 

Just needed to vent a bit.

[jellysundae]

I'm in a similar boat to you. I'm sat here typing this on my laptop bought in 2008. It has served me incredibly well during its nearly 10 year life, it's a real bog-standard machine but it's survived in spite of adversity and turned out to be a real work-horse, but the end of its life is being dictated by outside sources now.

This runs on Vista, which Windows no longer supports, anti-virus stuff no longer works...I've got no protection now because poor lappy is too old. *strokes it gently*

I'll be able to get a new one at some point this year. My Nan will be buying that for me thanks to a legacy in her will, thank you very much Nan (I realise that may read as I'm waiting for my Nan to die so I can have a new laptop D: Not so, lol. She died in March, will stuff is in the process of being sorted out) But I'm SO not looking forward to the process of finding one. ._. I have MS and my cognitive abilities are pretty FUBAR, I'm not going to understand all the technical stuff that I would have been able to before, and my impulse control and decision-making is dreadful now. I want to be able to physically see and feel something - not buy it online - but that will put me in very grave peril because of aggressive sales pitches D:

My brain...I describe how my brain functions with a computer analogy actually. I say it's like some knackered old desktop running on Windows 95: slooowww; hardly any memory; can only play one game at a time; ask it to do more than one thing at once and you get massive lag...all these problems I have, all the time. My brain can't process conversation at the speed the conversation is happening, so while I'm responding seemingly normally, what's actually happening is my mouth is running on ahead on its own. I say things - and more importantly agree to things - that later on, once brain has got caught up, I'm like, "WTF did you do/say/agree to, THAT for!!??" If I go and physically buy a laptop, I WILL be talked into something that isn't what I want.

So yeah I'm feeling a similar pain to you here. I LOVE the idea of a fast new machine that I can actually play games on. (OMG Minecraft, this can NOT handle that AT. ALL.) But I want one that suits me and isn't going to confuse me, and I don't know how much chance I have of that.

*joins in with your venting*

[firaplays]

I'm sorry your laptop is having problems :( I've got a black cloud of doom hanging over me when it comes to computers, so I can relate. I can't keep track of the times I've had things break or go bad a few weeks after getting them for no reason or have the tiniest slip happen at just the wrong angle and make all the expensive parts crack. The laptop I'm using now had some graphics glitches out of the box, and it only took a few months before I took some prescription painkillers and tripped over myself while I was carrying it >< Miraculously, the thing still works fine. It just has tape holding the monitor together XD I've never really had a laptop for long enough to get really attached to it (thanks black cloud of doom), but I get super attached to my phone. I started with just an ipod and ended up transferring that data to a phone, I like to think of it as putting the soul of the ipod into the phone. Cheesy, I know, but my life is basically in there. I'm totally lost without that thing.

Never mind my ramblings, I hope you find the perfect computer!