I got my first laptop sometime in July 2007 in preparation to head off to college in the fall. Windows Vista, Microsoft Office, The Sims 2, and iTunes--what else did a girl need to survive her undergraduate career?
During the first few weeks of school, I broke in my Gateway with a paper for the Great Conversation, unprecedented amounts of e-mail via Squirrelmail, and plenty of Facebook time. Since then, I've burned playlists to CDs, stayed up all night on G-chat with friends, edited photos, Skyped with my boyfriend, and written countless papers, a Modern Love column, and two novels. The battery died, so I replaced it. The hard drive lost its speed, so I reinstalled Windows. The comma key doesn't always work, so I have to be extra careful with my punctuation. And today, in a spectacular coup involving lots of scary whirring noises and extra heat output, I think The Sims 3 fried the DVD drive.
I'm generally good about not getting too attached to things. Things are not that important. They are replaceable. But I am sad about my laptop. It's getting older, and although I'll probably put off the inevitable for another year by getting an external DVD drive to feed my Sims addiction, my good old Gateway isn't going to last forever.
Here's to you, you 6-pound, dilapidated old computer. Feel free to go out in a blaze of glory of smoke and flames--just please, wait until after I've saved my most recent Word document.