Goodbye, ToughBook; Hello, New Hotness!

For some months now, I've been ready to throw my old beast of a laptop, the Panasonic ToughBook, out the window. It's so old and slow - I bought it second-hand in the summer of 2006, so it has certainly lived a long life. It began to seriously slow down about 18 months ago, at which time I upgraded the memory from a piddly 256 MB to its maximum of 750 MB. That definitely helped, for a while, but of course every automatic update makes the operating system and associated software that much more bloated and cumbersome. It now takes forever to do its work - so it's time for it to be retired. RIP.

I've now purchased its replacement, and freely admit to having succumbed to style over substance. After some consideration, I decided to go with one of the cheap new mini 'netbooks' flooding the market these days - specifically, the HP Mini 1140 NR, Vivienne Tam edition, which is being hyped as the world's first 'digital clutch'. I'm loving the tiny size and lightness of it - it will be so easy to travel with this little machine. But really, it's all about the looks. It's the prettiest computer in the world! Look!


Like any fashion item, there are of course matching accessories to be had, at a price. To wit: a wireless mouse, a padded tote (though the machine is sold with a protective red satin sleeve), and even a chiffon scarf. I've yet to succumb to the charms of those, though.

Today's my first day of using this little beauty and I'm liking it so far. The compact keyboard (92% of full size) works very well, though people with bigger hands would probably gripe about it. Haven't tried out the integral webcam or Bluetooth capabilities yet. My next priority is to set up wireless printing and transfer files over from the old laptop. Also, I need to get MS Office installed, but must wait until Monday when I can borrow a peripheral CD-ROM drive from work - a built-in drive is notably missing from these machines.

The only thing that I'm not crazy about so far is the trackpad. The buttons - which should be at the bottom of the pad - are instead placed to either side. Maybe there's some special technique to this, but I'm finding it impossible to use the trackpad and click with the same hand. Quite annoying - but perhaps I'll figure out a way around it.

In the meantime, I am continuing to admire it as an object of wondrous beauty fair. :-)