I have a new laptop

Well, I have a newer laptop now, but it’s a used laptop, a hand-me-down from my sister and brother-in-law in Seattle. When I mentioned in my previous post that I was planning to look for a new laptop, I idly thought, “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if a friend or relative offered me a used laptop?” But I was quite pleasantly surprised when that actually happened, so thanks to Morgan and Larry.

This laptop is a Microsoft Surface 4 with touchscreen capability, significantly thinner and lighter than my old one, since it doesn’t have a DVD drive and uses a solid-state hard drive. But it’s a significantly higher-end model than I probably would’ve bought for myself. It’s also much faster than the old one, which I was surprised to realize I’ve had for ten years, and which was refurbished to begin with, so I guess I was way behind the curve. This is also the first non-HP laptop I’ve had in at least 20 years — in fact, by coincidence, it arrived in the mail exactly 20 years to the day after my purchase of the first of my past 3 consecutive HP laptops. (I don’t remember what laptop, if any, I owned before that one.)

I took my time loading the software, since I have no urgent need for it, and I hit some frustrating snags getting my e-mail client set up on the laptop, so I took a couple of days’ break from it to destress before returning to the process. But the rest went smoothly, and now I’ve gotten it mostly set up the way I want it. One thing I haven’t quite figured out, though, is how to get my two computers to read each other’s files. They can only seem to see each other’s “Public” folders, which don’t have anything in them.

My former laptop used to be my primary computer, hooked up to my desktop monitor and keyboard, but since I got my mini-PC a year and a half ago, I haven’t used my laptop for much of anything except during my trip to Shore Leave and during internet outages when I had to take it to the library. It was just too slow and cumbersome to be worth doing much more with. Now that I have a faster, lighter laptop, I might try getting back into my old habits of writing on the balcony or on the nearby university campus, or just on my couch or in the bedroom to get a change of scenery. It’s a bit small for the laptop pouch in my backpack, but the pouch seems to fit it snugly enough between my back and the weight of the pack’s other contents, which might be adequate for walks to campus. But my siblings sent the original box along too, and that fits perfectly into the backpack’s laptop pouch, if a bit snugly. So I might use that for car trips. For now, I’m storing it in my backpack as I did with my previous laptop. It remains to be seen how often I’ll use it at home.

They also sent a few more items they didn’t need, including a spare power cable, an unfolding laptop stand (which I couldn’t figure out how to use until I found a similar one online), a touchscreen stylus (which I haven’t used on the laptop yet but has proved useful for typing on my phone), a USB hub, and a laptop docking station, i.e. a box that has all the different connectors that modern laptops have sacrificed for lightness. Unfortunately, the docking station’s old enough that it doesn’t have an HDMI port for my desk monitor. One reason I wanted a laptop was as a backup in case my desktop mini-PC needed repair, so I was hoping I’d be able to connect my monitor and keyboard to it if need be. But to do that, it looks like I’d need to buy a USB-to-HDMI adapter. At least those apparently don’t cost much.

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Meanwhile, our recent cold snap in Cincinnati appears to have killed my car battery. I guess the solar trickle charger can keep it from running dry, but can’t protect it from the cold. The solar panel being buried under 5 inches of snow for several days probably didn’t help. I found out the battery was dead when I tried to go to a vaccination appointment, but fortunately it was close enough that I could walk there and only be 15-20 minutes late. Luckily it was warm enough that the unshoveled sidewalks were slushy rather than slick. (But seriously, homeowners, please shovel your front walks!) Unfortunately, it’s continued to be really cold since, so I’ll probably have to wait until it warms up a bit to take my car in for a new battery, since I’d have to walk home from the garage and then back when it was ready. I’m wondering if there’s anyone that makes house calls to change batteries in situ, but that might cost extra.