new 'puter

the computer i'm currently typing on is the laptop i got as a college graduation gift from the 'rents, in 1997. specs: 150 mhz pentium processor, 40 mb ram, 1.2 gb hard drive, 33.6 modem, 14.1" active matrix screen, ~7 lbs heavy.

reasons why it's good: it still works. even though it's got this old-timey slow processor and practically no ram at all, it's not actually painful to use. at least, not for the old-timey programs that i'm still running on it. reasons why it's bad: the hard drive is full (granted, it's got about 400 mb of mp3 files, but hey, a girl's gotta have her tunes), it has no usb ports, the cover of the screen has an increasingly large and alarming crack that will eventually (soon?) go all the way through, and at that moment the screen will fall off and the computer will be immediately and completely unusable, the battery holds a charge for approximately 1.27 minutes, it weighs a TON, it is so old that it is absolutely incompatible with my digital camera (which has the audacity to need windows 98 when i only run windows 95), and it has just, as of this evening, contracted some weird pixel disease whereby parts of the screen are shimmering in red (pixel pox! pixel pox!)

so, i want a new computer. in a new computer, i want, more than anything else, portability. but it also has to be a decent machine, because it will be my ONLY machine. so, i've been looking at the ultra lights, specifically the very yummy sony vaio sr27. specs: 2.98 lbs, 10.4" tft xga screen (small, i know, but i've got young eyes and i *really* value a small size in a computer), 30 gb hard drive, 750 mhz pentium 3 processor, 256 ram, yada yada yada, plus it is a sony (like my digital camera) so it has a supersexy memorystick slot (like my digital camera)! price: $2064, from sony, cheaper from ebay. alternatively, there's a compaq that looks good, with a 1.1 ghz (gigahertz!) chip, 320 mb ram, 20 gb hard drive, internal dvd/cd-rw combo drive, ethernet ready, 14.1" tft xga screen, all for only $1500 on ebay. catch? of course there's a catch! this 'puter weighs in at just under 7 lbs. 7 lbs is HEAVY when you're carrying it around in your messanger bag on your bike going from lab to class to library to coffeeshop to office to home. i need mobility!

of course, all this is academic, since i SOOOOO don't have the money for a new computer. my current finances include a monthly paycheck of $1300 (yes, you heard right, that's MONTHLY), and a credit card balance of somewhere around $1400. this is not the recipe for a new computer (nor the $23,000 harp i want--hahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHA! like THAT'S ever gonna happen!). to give you an idea of how pathetic my finances are, i just today balanced my checkbook after recording my paycheck from the end of last month and the bills i've paid at the beginning of this month, and i have $147.45 in my bank account. this has to last me the rest of the month, plus i haven't sent in a credit card payment for this month yet. right. hellooooo minimum payment!

so. one of these days, the screen is gonna break right off my computer, and i'm REALLY gonna need a new one. when that day comes, i'll have to shell out the bucks that i don't have. blech. meanwhile, i think i'll lament the education/compensation mismatch that is being a graduate student on stipend and go try to convince the new grad students on campus to join UPenn's fledgling grad student (graduate EMPLOYEE) union.

p.s. the reason i wrote this entry, really, was not so much to dazzle y'all with the ins and outs of my consumer practices and my poverty, but rather so i can look back on it later and laugh heartily at what i thought were good specs on a computer ("oh, how quaint! they used to make computers with 30gb hard drives! ha ha! the porn i just downloaded was 55gb! oh my, those were the days...")