Laptop Limbo : : Anne McAllister

This is the time of year that I should be making resolutions and cleaning my house after holiday celebrations and, according to my editor, finishing my book.

And I will – but first I need to find a laptop.

My laptop, Charley, whom I have loved for the nearly three years I’ve had him because he is light and fast and responsive, seems to have a fatal illness which hours of assiduous customer service and a complete wipe of the hard drive and a return to factory specs do not seem able to put right.

It  could be the fan. The fan makes a terrible grinding whirring gasping noise.  And then it’s silent, and I can’t think that’s a good thing for Charley.  I fear he will over-heat. So I shut him off. Then when he’s cooled down, he comes back on and behaves for a while, and then he begins to groan.  Also not a good thing.

I am not conversant in laptop-speak, but when even though I can personify my laptop to the extent of giving him a name, when he begins to talk to me, I worry.  I fear for either my sanity or his health. My sanity seems pretty good at the moment, so it’s Charley’s health that is definitely in question.

I have a friend who thinks he might have a fan he can put in my laptop.  But in the meantime, because while I love Charley, I realize his life span may be limited, I am looking at laptops. (I don’t say ‘replacement’ in his hearing, but you know what I mean).

So, do you have suggestions?  Recommendations?  Commiserations? 

Any of all of the above?

This is what I’d like: a 13” or 14” laptop with a fast processor (Windows, not Mac because I do stuff that I would have to change everything for if I got a Mac, even though I am sometimes tempted). I’d like it fairly light-weight and I’d like it to survive being dragged to the library and the coffee shop and where I teach my genealogy class when I’m not writing romances.

Another Charley, basically.

But unlike Charley, I don’t think I want to take this new one on serious long trips. I used to do that. Then I got a netbook and it was so much less stressful, not to mention ‘heavy,’ that I’m leaning toward that for travel.

I took Charley to New York a few weeks ago and he did fine. But he stayed in the apartment once we got there.   When I took him to Washington DC last summer, he stayed in the hotel room after the first day because he was too heavy to schlep across the mall every morning and back every afternoon. So I’m thinking a new one doesn’t have to stand up to the bangs and bumps of travel the way Charley did.

I want good customer service, which I have had with Dell. So I have no complaints there.  But that isn’t to say someone else doesn’t also have good customer service, though apparently some don’t. 

My daughter, who has a laptop of a different brand that begins with T, is not at all enamored of their customer service. “What service?” she has been known to shriek.

So, I would welcome recommendations and suggestions. Or warnings. 

Either one will help me narrow things down. I am leaning toward the Dell XPS 14z.  Do you have one? Do you know anyone who does? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

Besides, if you warn me and I do it anyway, you’re entitled to say, “I told you so!”

Anne is working on a Christmas book. She’d better hurry and finish it because, as her editor says, “It is rather tied to a particular time of year, Anne.”  Er, yes.

  Her next title, Savas’s Wildcat, will be an April 2012 Presents Extra.  And her most recent book was The Night That Changed Everything, out last November  from Presents Extra.