New laptop
So I realized that I can't quite live without a Windows PC. Go figure. My tower got zapped when the power went out a few weeks ago. When the power went back on, I tried to power up and the tower simply would not boot. The power supply appeared to be okay, but I'm guessing that the BIOS got fried. The error I get is some BIOS checksum error. Even manually clearing the the CMOS did nothing. Bummer.
I was originally going to get another tower to replace the zapped one, but figured a laptop might be more convenient. Along with various software that I used regularly on my XP box, there's a handful of GPS apps that I couldn't take along with me to run on my Macbook Pro (yeah, I could have gotten virtualization software, but with 80 gigs of HD space, that doesn't leave a whole lot of space for data once the apps are isntalled).
So I got a Compaq Presario F755 - I got it at an excellent price, and was just a tiny bit more than the tower I was looking at. Convenience over power won. Anyways, this thing has a 160gig harddrive with 2 gigs of RAM. Far better specs than any other laptops I looked at within the price range (less than $550). I refuse to purchase a high end PC anymore... they're such commodities these days that commanding a high price doesn't seem to make sense. Anyways, I noticed that the prices of notebooks have gone up over the past year. I'm guessing it's due to the same reasons there's an increase in consumer goods.
