My laptop has been shitting me to tears recently which is a little annoying as for the most part its (a Dell Latitude D820) been my pride and joy.  It’s not even very old yet, just over 15 months now, but slowly bits appear to be degrading or dieing completely over time.   Obviously when its used day in, day out like this one things are bound to go wrong, but I would have liked a little more life out of it.  Since buying it:

• the original hard drive started clicking and was running slowly, so I replaced it (£50);
• at 13 months of age (just over the 12 month warranty for consumables), the battery went from full power (4-5hr life) to less than 30 mins (+£80 for replacement); and
• the TruLife™ just doesn’t have that same true to life brightness and vibrance it once did. (+£x00?!?)

So, I’ll be on the hunt for a new one in the next few months, and am considering a trip to the U.S in March to take advantage of this U.S Dollar slump, which is currently trading at less than 50p.  At the moment the Dell XPS M1730 (fr $2500USD), or a new Apple Macbook Pro (fr $1999USD).  I’m sure everyone will agree with me that the Macbook would have to be cooler (and more practical, as you can actually fit it in a backpack), but the XPS is just full of such power goodness, and should be a good resolution to my lack of computer since moving to the ‘K.

On a more embarrassing note, along with my frustration at the ailing laptop, I was trying to work out why I was straining my eyes so much, as the screen was difficult to read.  Much to my embarrassment, for the last couple of months I’ve been surviving struggling with an LCD monitor without cleartype mode on (how to turn it on), which is a font smoothing  mode for LCD screens and an absolutely positively must have for laptop and LCD owners alike.  Thanks Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror for re-aquanting me with the obvious whilst reading through an older one of this posts.

It seems, at least for the moment eye strain has improved slightly.