white out

Another afternoon not well spent.

I have been saddled with envy every since the next-door neighbor came over with her new HP notebook (P135k) with it’s wide screen and shiny exterior. My Compaq Armada is what you might call top-of-of the line . . . 10 years ago. It certainly pales in comparison with her HP.

I am never one to be envious of the shiny things other people have. That is to say I cannot understand why every one I know has to have the newest mobile phone/ipod/PDA every time. I am the type of person who would still be using her 4 ½-year old Nokia 3310 if it didn’t just stop working properly one day.

The reason for my present envy stems from the fact that my laptop is useless when it comes to presentations in class. The screen has this horrible tendency to go all white (due to an unknown reason -- overheating, perhaps). When this happens I am left with no other option but to restart. Unfortunately, mine is not the one-click type that reboots in less than a minute. I need to suffer through disk checking and starting up processes that on bad days could last for 3 or 4 minutes. This “white-out phenomenon” occurs for no apparent reason and at the most unpredictable times. Sometimes I can totally forget that it happens as my laptop is white-out-free for weeks. Other times the screen is white longer than it is in color and virtually useless. The most frustrating times are when I have just rebooted the system and finally about to finish with the start-up then the screen just goes white. Take this white-out phenomenon away and I will embrace my laptop lovingly and never let it go.

NOTE: In the time I took to write this entry the white-out phenomenon has occurred thrice making what should have been a 5-minute blogging update to last more than 30 minutes.