Well played, Dell.

Quick update, inviting a new member into the Mojo Wire family. Also, brag.

As many people know, I've been without a laptop for the past several months, and most of my writing work, along with updates to the blog, internet posts, etc, have been done from the marginal discomfort of my Grandmother's desktop. And while I mean no offense to the many desktop users out there, the lack of mobility drives me a little crazy. So, after making a little land-deal [which I went into here, here, and oh yeah, here], I put in an order to Dell, and yesterday, I was told my laptop had been shipped. This news came at the same time I got a cheap copy of Microsoft Office in the mail, and I naturally thought I'd be sitting on the software for the 5-6 business days that Dell told me to wait.

Imagine my surprise when the computer got here today. Glad I didn't put that extra money into two day delivery.

Anyway, the new laptop is a sleek, black, 15 inch Dell Inspiron 1545, running Windows XP -- a pleasant surprise, since Windows Vista has a nasty reputation I'd rather not deal with until they've had a couple years to work the bugs out, and because Dell downgraded me for no extra charge [and I've heard stories that it usually costs upwards of $100 to get the operating system that actually...you know, operates]. Screen and picture are great, it's slightly smaller and a little slimmer than my old Toshiba was [Shalom, friend], but weighs about the same because I upped my order to a higher cell battery, which has added poundage to the computer and -- my only complaint thus far -- sticks out the back of the unit a little bit. It doesn't look bad or anything, I'm just wondering how it's going to sit in my bag with the uneven back. Otherwise, I'm very pleased, and it looks like the next week or so will be going towards setting the machine up with the necessities -- namely, all my old writings, the few pictures I keep, iTunes and my music, VLC Player, Firefox [or possibly Google Chrome, as FF has been royally pissing me off these past few months] etc, etc.

A lot of this requires internet access, which will be a little wonky for the time being since Verizon's pretty militant about how many machines you run on their basic connection. I'll be trying to get around it this weekend, but likely I'll be getting some sort of upgrade from them come Monday [wireless maybe? In a house I live in? Dare I dream this crazy dream that most people realized five years ago?]. Afterwards, I'll be trying to finish up the next draft of "Trendsetter" [which will probably be all I'm doing for the next month or so] with the notes I've put together the past several weeks, though I'm expecting a lot of progress to be made right on the new computer.

Fresh surroundings, fresh perspectives.

Cheers.