Unloved

So remember that cataclysmic day I had a few weeks back when my laptop and my car both went on the fritz? The car was mended immediately, whereas my laptop remained in the shop. And remained. And remained. For a whole frigging month.

In other words, four weeks later, after YT had bitched and complained and coerced and threatened and practiced ‘letting go’ and other Zen-like tactics, the shop finally caved in and presented YT with a brand-new machine – albeit a completely different model and make from the previous one, because as it happened they didn’t have any more.

[Actually, before they decided to provide me with a proper NEW machine, get this: they tried to give me a used laptop instead, one they’d had in the shop, that they claimed was nonetheless ‘better, newer’ than the last one. I went up there to look at it I just stared in disbelief when they brought it out – it was all scratched and mucked up, and they still tried to tell me it was a real nice deal I was getting. Pfft yeah! When I asked them what it was doing in the shop if it was such a great machine, they told me that it had been stolen in a break-in a few months back and the police had managed to apprehend the loot a few days later, ‘so they didn’t do anything to it, they didn’t even use it.’ Can you believe it? Talk about bad karma. And this was what they were offering me in return for my brand-new and pretty frigging expensive laptop that broke down after four months’ use and that they made a mess of fixing – I’ll spare you the tedious details. But I digress.]

So last Friday I brought home the new laptop and I tell you, it’s not love. On Friday, in fact, I was quite inconsolable, feeling like I’d been forced into an arranged marriage with someone I hardly knew and found remarkably bland and uninteresting. I know it’s a ‘stable’ machine, that it will probably prove ‘good to me’, is ‘well-endowed’ technologically and more expensive than the last one. But I’m just not smitten. The best I can hope for at this point is that I will eventually grow to feel some affection and, in the best of all possible worlds, love it.

It pales in comparison to my last one, which had one of those true-bright monitors [or whatever they’re called] and a deep, resonating sound in the speakers, and just looked really cool [even though some people maintained it looked like the Mac truck of laptops – I beg to differ]. But the main problem I have with this new addition to the family is... the monitor. Sure, the guy in the shop gave me the hard-sell, claiming this was one of the best laptop monitors around etc, but here’s the deal: in order to get a clear display, I have to set it to a certain screen resolution, and this makes font sizes – particularly on web pages, because in Word etc. I can change the font – absolutely tiny. So tiny that they’re virtually impossible to read. And If I set the screen resolution to something different, so that everything appears bigger, it also makes everything look fuzzy and very amateurish. Like someone in Kindergarten had cobbled together the items that appear on the screen in front of me. Kind of like that.

I spent the weekend fiddling around, trying to get a display vaguely resembling my old monitor and have learned how to increase the font size on web pages manually every time I load a frigging page [argh!] but this means that if I change the font on my own blog, for instance, the column still stays really thin while the font grows large so there are maybe five words to a line and it looks.really.stupid.

I suppose I could live with that, though... until I open the Haloscan box to read the comments. Because the font in the comment boxes is minuscule – and alas, there is no setting to change the font size of pop-up boxes. So here I am, like a blind mole with my face about three inches from the monitor, trying to read all the lovely messages from my blog friends and other well-wishers [spammers go home!] and getting majorly irritated because reading letters that are too small for anyone to read without a magnifying glass stresses me out no end.

To add insult to injury, this machine keeps making these tiny little clicking noises when I work. Every few minutes – click! click! click! – it’s not loud or anything, but it’s distracting. And the shop claims they’ve never heard of such a thing [and are probably shaking their heads and rolling their eyes and making circular motions with their index fingers pointing at their temples. But I swear it’s true!]

Anyway, please forgive this little rant, which I fear has come across as the pitiful peep of one resigned to utter futility. And spare a thought for YT, trapped forever in an unsatisfying relationship with a laptop too expensive to replace. Meh.

PS the weather was gorgeous today, sunny bright and warm [ish]. Current temps are 2°C and the sun came up at 07.54 and went down at 19.22.

PPS Oh and if you have any fabulous wisdom to dispense regarding font sizes etc, – something I’ve missed entirely [hardly likely] – feel free to drop it in the comments box. Ta.