...But I Got A Laptop Instead!

Went to Robertson's after work this evening. An odd little business - they sell new and used computers and office equipment, but have an electric bicycle division as well (?!).

Looked at some e-bikes and had a chat with the owner. I think I'm going to get this Mongoose Electric Comfort Bike, in silver-green:
I looked it up online tonight, but shouldn't have. The shop here is charging $899 for it, which seemed reasonable given others I've seen - but it's less than half that price in the US. :-( Eh...anyway. Turns out that Robertson's do not do rentals after all, but the owner said that if I bought that bike and found after a week or so that I really didn't like it, he'd let me return it. Can't ask for a fairer deal than that. So I'll give him a ring in a week or two, when I'll have more time.

After looking at the bikes, I took a look at their supply of second-hand laptops. My boss has been sending foreign students (with little money, in need of decent second-hand computers) to this store for years, with pretty good results. I've decided that I really want a laptop of my own (a PC) to have upstairs at the desk in the pantry. But since our Macintosh is not even two years old, and is pretty good, there was no need to go spending a lot of money on something new and fancy, when all I really needed was something on which to access the internet and do word processing.

Anyway, I ended up getting what seems to be a pretty great deal. I got a Panasonic Toughbook CF-48 - A. is quite familiar with these, as the military uses them. It has a Pentium IV 1.6 GHz chip, a 40 GB hard drive, 256 MB of memory, a DVD/CD writer, and has Windows XP installed. It's a couple years old, but I should still get good mileage out of it - and it only cost $499.

A. is going to get it set up with a wireless internet connection this week, and see about finding me some software (MS Office and an anti-virus program). Then I should be ready to go. And not a moment too soon - the Dell laptop we've been using the past year was issued to A. by the army and has to be returned to them next month.