Apple Sauce?

So, thinking I had run out of domestic appliance disasters and bed hunts to write about - I have a new topic.

My darling expensive all-singing, all-dancing cantankerous Hal is no longer co-operating with me.

Hal, for anyone who doesn't know is my Apple laptop. Technically speaking, he is Hal 2, as Hal (1) is an Apple desktop. Very nice and elegant too, is Hal (1). No horrid towers or awful things like that, just a rather nice looking screen and a keyboard.

Anyway, Hal 2 is a top-of-the-range MacBookPro. With a large screen. Well, he was top-of-the-range when I bought him a couple of years ago. Now he has been outpaced and outremembered, so to speak. He also happens to be the most expensive computer I have ever bought in my life.

I carefully put him to bed on Sunday night, and then fell onto my Thermarest.

On Monday morning, I pressed his little start button. Nothing. I pressed it a couple of times for quite a while. Still nothing. Partner impatiently interfered, and generating all his static electricity that he is always charged with, managed to get a noise out of Hal. Whirr, he went pathetically. And then stopped. (Hal, I mean, not Partner). The black screen glared at us.

His sleep light was on. His sleep light should not be on when he is shut down. Nor should it be on when he is meant to be waking up. Perhaps he is like me and needs all the sleep he can get.

Partner went off to work. His last words were: 'Go and buy a new computer - there will be somewhere open today (Bank Hol), there always is.'

With him out of the way, I carefully took out the install disk, inserted it, and followed all the minimal instructions in the book. Of course, without the computer working, one can't get onto the internet to get useful info.

When I pressed varying combinations of the On key plus, a few others, I heard a second lively whirr. The one where Hal usually springs into life. Nope. He faded again. I turned him off, and he emitted a plaintive whimper. I couldn't get the install disk out either.

I went out to buy a new computer.

Now, while I am not the techiest person in the world, I am pretty fast on computers. I Can. Not. Bear. a slow computer. Or something that hangs and crashes. I have no patience with anything that wastes my time in the world of computers.

I looked in the shop and asked about specifications. I basically wanted an inexpensive model, that looked ok, with as much processor power and memory as possible. I didn't need anything fancy. I already have one of those and he is in big-time sulk mode.

I settled on a dual core HP with 3GB of RAM. It's actually a slightly higher spec than Hal. And to be fair, it does seem fast. Even I can't moan. At least I'm not hitting the keys and waiting five minutes for them to appear on screen.

HP - the sauce?


So I'm relearning Windows. Which seems remarkably like Apple but not as sophisticated. Hal has been despatched to the AppleDoc with no idea of how much he will cost or how long it will take.

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