Computer recycling

One of the things that had escaped my recent cull of redundant electrical appliances was my old work laptop computer. I had brought it down to France, along with a hoard of other stuff that, strictly speaking, did not belong to me – the desktop that preceded the laptop, an enormous printer, and various obsolete mobile phones. Once I had run-off my outstanding cases it was time to finally sign-off from the world of insurance. I fully expected all this equipment to be returned, so on my last visit to family in the UK I took advantage of the trip to buy a new computer. Now, normally I am dead against bringing stuff in from the UK if it is available in France, and whilst laptops are, of course, available here the big problem is the keyboard. For reasons I have not yet established, the French keyboard has a completely different arrangement of keys – the top line starts ‘AZERTY’. This might be helpful for my French writing skills, but when I work in English day in-day out it was only going to prove to be an annoyance.

 

To cut a long story short, I ended up buying a new HP Windows 8, 11” touch screen laptop, which I have been unhappily using for the last six months. OK, I admit it – I may have complained about Windows 8, but I was slowly getting to grips with it. My normal set-up is to connect a large external screen, keyboard and mouse, and when working in that configuration it was fine. If I needed to finish off some work in the evening or have a browse on the Net I preferred to use it as a true laptop and that is where I first began to think I may have a problem. First of all, the eleven inch screen is really too small for anything other than a very short session of proofreading or editing, but the real problem emerged when we went away in the campervan. I discovered that the glossy touchscreen was completely useless outside. No screen is good in full sunlight, but I’m writing this now sitting outside under the umbrella (not on the HP!). Whilst I don’t want clients to think I’m editing their texts whilst sitting on the beach, I do want to be able to work whilst we are travelling in the campervan this summer or on the terrace at the back of the house, like today.

I’d never had any trouble with my old work computer, many is the time I sat outside working last summer, and it had a good battery life. The good news was that I’d been allowed to keep all the equipment; the cost of collecting it out-weighed its written down value. The problem was that the password was a distant memory and I had none of the set-up discs. Apart from the inaccessibility caused by my memory failure, this was a perfectly serviceable computer. In fact, with the exception of the touch screen the specification is actually better than the new one I bought six months ago. After a bit of internet research I realised that if I loaded a new operating system it would wipe all the old work stuff off the hard drive, including the password problem, and I could start again from zero. I did toy with idea of buying Windows 7, but I’m pleased that I didn’t as it turned out that loading and configuring everything myself, rather than having it done in the shop, was a valuable learning process in itself. In fact, I’ve learnt an enormous amount about computers in the last week; this is something that I would never have considered doing previously, yet it has been an overwhelming success. So, for less than two hundred euro I’ve been able to turn a laptop that was gathering dust in the corner, waiting for the OH’s famous sledge hammer on the hard drive treatment, to a fully functioning mobile office.