(no subject)

A woman on our (GISTers) support list hit it on the head. Here I was trying to explain it to Brigit yesterday - would that we'd met for lunch a day later so I could quote the woman writing to our eList, "The underwater feeling from the gleevec coupled the lack of exercise really zapped me. "

"The underwater feeling". That's it exactly. I have to find a way to kick past it, to get more physically active. The other side effects of the drug (high blood pressure & blood sugar, muscle cramping) add to the lethargy and I'm finding that my mind is slowing down at an alarming rate. I don't want to be a bundle of kelp floating on the ocean of life!* I've got to figure out how to kick myself into something fun, like what Melanie & her bicycle have achieved.


*Yeah, I really wrote that.

Looking at laptops

Okay, I need geeky advice. I need to start shopping for a new laptop, notebook, whatevertheheck they're called this month. But first, knowing the caliber of the Geeks Who Are My Friends, I think I  should lay down some specifications:

1 - PC, not Mac. Yes, I know Mac is superior to PC but nonetheless, I do not want to be learning a new 'language' for my laptop that I don't 'speak' on my desktop. Remember, I am a book-geek, not a computer geek and whatever I buy, I will wish to make it last for, oh, five years or so, so I don't have to go through this torture again anytime soon. Because buying a computer IS torture for one who doesn't know a thing about all those 'features' in the description box.

2 - I don't play but the most rudimentary of video games. Think "Bejeweled" or any "Hidden Object" game you'd find on BigFish.com (which company I have an account with because I do love my games.)

3 - I am primarily in need for one that will perform well for traveling heraldic purposes, assuming that for any other purposes, just about any laptop would do so long as it could handle MicroSoft Office. (Breath! Again, slowly... I told you that I'm a computer neophyte. I am the market MicroSoft was designed for!)

4 - I like the larger ones, 15" screens and all that, because that means larger keyboards and I have big, fat fingers. No, really - I do, and it makes typing a pain when one ends up spelling "sit" as "asitg" unless one is being extremely careful. So bigger keyboards are good for me. But I'd swap 'smaller keyboard' for 'better performance' if I had to.

5 - I can't used one of those touchpads to save my soul. (See #4, above). I'll be plugging in a mouse.

So all that being said, do any of my geeky friends have recommendations for laptops? It doesn't have to be a particular model. I'm going to be saving up for one and probably won't be able to buy it for a few months, so even just "this brand has a good rep" or "you should probably not settle for a memory of less than ____ size on your hard drive" would be really helpful. I plan on taking it to events, possibly even  including Pennsic, to use as a good herald-y person would. Ithink I'm ballparking about $500-600 dollars for it...yeah, I know that more would get me a bigger, badder machine, but my current laptop is dead and I'd like to have the funds for a new one before KWHSS 2012. Which, since this is coming out of family funds (remember I'm a houswife), is about as good as I can go without tripping my guilt-meter. And because my funds are limited, I want to wring out the best of the good stuff that I can for the cost.