An Update on My 2012 Mac Air

Typically I want to get 3 years out of a laptop to amortize spending on a premium grade machine. I’m at 4 years on this one and while there is better hardware available now, so far it hasn’t been enough better to drive me to buy something new. I maxed it out when I bought it; […]

Mac Daddy!

In my Three Strikes post I wrapped up the sorry tale of trying to get an X1 Carbon delivered from Lenovo. The day after I cancelled I did get an email indicating it was going to be delayed another 30 days. I’m hoping that is just due to two separate systems not being quite in […]

Lenovo–Three Strikes

Last Friday Lenovo told me my new laptop would ship this Monday, or “much much sooner”. Monday I called to check the status – seeing as how the online status page still was not updated – to be told that due to constraints it would not ship until the 27th. The agent was unable to […]

Update on My Lenovo Laptop

Order status on the web site still shows an estimated ship date of the 4th (of September) for my X1 Carbon. Called again today and the story is that it’s supposed to ship on the 17th, but the Ethernet dongle – which previously was forever tied to the laptop – now will be shipped separately […]

Reading Reviews, Ordering a Laptop, and Lenovo

Since earlier this year I’ve been thinking to replace my aging but still useful laptop, mostly to get something lighter, but driven by wanting something that has better battery life and a smidge of needing a new toy. I don’t buy often so it’s fun to catch up on the market. I’ve watched the ultrabook […]

Battery Life–The Hidden Cost of Keeping a Laptop

I’ve had my Dell E6500 for about 3-1/2 years now. I’ve recently upgraded the original (back when a SSD was a new thing) 64G drive to a 128G SSD, but otherwise spent no money on it. Good machine. Over the last couple months battery life has seemed to drop off, a 100% charge seems like […]

A New SSD For My Laptop

I’ve managed to get by for more than 3 years with the original 64G SSD in my laptop, but lately I found myself having to prune things to keep getting by. Pruning isn’t bad, actually good to do, but a pain to be forced into it. I decided to look at upgrading, both to have […]

Will You Buy Refurbished? Part 1

A couple months back the laptop my wife uses was fading away, the internal power connector was broken/barely working and it looked like a motherboard swap would be required. Out of warranty and at $150+ for the motherboard (plus some aggravation), time to buy something new. It’s used for browsing, email, etc, and the one […]

What Should I Carry in My Laptop Bag

I have a tendency to carry more than I need, the equivalent of the Batman Utility Belt. I just went through and did some pruning, tried to get back to the basics: Laptop. My E6500 for now. Love the machine, wish it was lighter. Looking with awe at the ultrabooks coming out, debating how much […]

An Update on My Dell E6500

I bought my E6500 almost three years ago, giving away what was a perfectly good Latitude to trade up to the latest and greatest, including a 64G SSD. It’s been a good machine, runs Windows 7 without issue and even though I hibernate the machine daily, the SSD still goes on. I wasn’t at all […]