New Toy

I have a new toy!

No, it doesn’t need batteries.  Battery, yes.  Batteries, no.

I have had my eye on this Toshiba netbook for some time.  I even recommended it to a neighbor that was looking for a netbook.  She bought one when a great deal came up.  I held off. 

I kept looking for a new netbook since my old one is horribly underpowered for I want it to do.  But, alas, I am really really cheap.  Really cheap.  My first netbook was a HUGE deal for the money.  I really loved having that little lightweight wonder to haul around with me when I left home instead of my 8lb 17.3” ASUS.

Late last week the dual core version of the Toshiba netbook I had been lusting for all this time went on sale for the same price that the single core version was at several months ago.  What a dilemma.  Should I bite the bullet or hope for a better price?

I rushed over to my friend’s house and abused her netbook to make sure I could live with the keyboard and form factor.  It took me about 15 minutes to decide to buy one.  It arrived on Monday!  I have been messing around with it ever since.

I love Toshiba.  I really do.  This is the 3rd one in our house.  But, OMG, those people load up an absurd amount of bloatware.  I removed about half of it; it has made a HUGE difference in how long it takes this machine to load.  I will do a little more research but I suspect that most of the programs left can also be removed with little or no impact.  Hell, they even included a CD/DVD writing program – this netbook DOESN’T HAVE A CD/DVD DRIVE!  Doh.

The original plan was to sell the old netbook but TOH has expressed some interest in having it (Not Zerb called him a douchenozzle for wanting to keep it, oh yes he did).  That will officially up the count of computers in our house to, gasp, six.  We are totally outnumbered.  If they ever decide to revolt we are toast.

Too bad the extra ram stick I ordered turned out to be defective.  A replacement will be sent but until then I will have to live with the 2gb it came with. 

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P.S.  I was working my way through my reader on Monday and ran across a deal on an Acer netbook comparably equipped for $100 less!  Sigh.  But, it looked like that deal was live for about a nanosecond because the second time I went back to look at it the deal had expired.  Had I not already purchased the Toshiba I would have ordered one of those in less than nanosecond time.  Acer may not be a top brand but that little netbook I have has held up quite well in spite of all the abuse I have dished out.