An epitaph for a faithful laptop.
Christmas 2009, you were first opened, and we downloaded and installed windows 7 together... I thought you were the bees knees as you had four, FOUR ! USB ports... Not on the back. No! On the sides for ease of access! Oh Yes! Plus sockets for Ethernet cables and external monitor/printer pin ports. Excitingly you had a HDMI port... Already to be used on my newly purchased HD ready TV... But as you were 17" of widescreen already with surround sound... Why would I ever plug you into the telly!
Indeed my friend, we watched my entire dvd collection on your in-built dvd rewritable drive...
Life was good together, for many years we worked, played and viewed the world together through the window of your screen.
...
But you got sick... We laughed it off, you not being able to run my favourite game back in 2012... Ditching windows for Linux... But... Now you wheeze through it, and it is painful to watch.
We watched every episode of Fairy Tail together... I would make a cup of tea as you downloaded from youtube... You never used to do that... I was concerned...
With such a big screen, you never did like to be away from a plug for anymore than an hour or two... But now even five minutes unplugged led to an early sleep... You had lost your mobility and pride... You were a mere desktop in disguise... The shame of it...
...
Windows 10... We both wanted it in a way... But you just couldn't cope with the change... Then it began... We started watching things separately. I had to watch my Blu-ray discs with some-one else... I started playing my favourite game on my phone...
...
But we still worked together... We had to. I had no choice... Even though I once thought of you as slim and light, although you appeared unchanged, you had become fat, ugly, slab-like and oh so heavy. You knew I no longer found you attractive. It left us both bitter. You wanted me to enjoy my time and spend time on the forums... I felt you slowed me down... Then it happened...
You broke.
It was not a driver, or a faulty OS or even an accident involving a fall or a spilt drink. No. The letter K physically crumpled into your worn out keyboard, this was quickly followed by J becoming unresponsive, L becoming stubborn on whether it worked or not and then randomly caps lock decided to lock up completely...
Loyally we worked on together... I even hooked up a usb keyboard... But by then, we both knew... I bought a 1TB hardrive and began downloading the 30gb of our life together from your nearly full, noisy, hardrive.
...
As I write this, smugly, on my new 2 in 1, I will remember the good times. You will be consigned and be raised into the attic to be placed in the box and rest on top of the greats, the Atari 2600, the spectrum, the commodore 64, Atari ST, Amstrad mega-pc, and some nondescript 186, 286 and 386 machines...
You out lasted more than half a decade... And that my friend, was an achievement.
Goodbye. You have earned your rest. Collect dust in peace.
Indeed my friend, we watched my entire dvd collection on your in-built dvd rewritable drive...
Life was good together, for many years we worked, played and viewed the world together through the window of your screen.
...
But you got sick... We laughed it off, you not being able to run my favourite game back in 2012... Ditching windows for Linux... But... Now you wheeze through it, and it is painful to watch.
We watched every episode of Fairy Tail together... I would make a cup of tea as you downloaded from youtube... You never used to do that... I was concerned...
With such a big screen, you never did like to be away from a plug for anymore than an hour or two... But now even five minutes unplugged led to an early sleep... You had lost your mobility and pride... You were a mere desktop in disguise... The shame of it...
...
Windows 10... We both wanted it in a way... But you just couldn't cope with the change... Then it began... We started watching things separately. I had to watch my Blu-ray discs with some-one else... I started playing my favourite game on my phone...
...
But we still worked together... We had to. I had no choice... Even though I once thought of you as slim and light, although you appeared unchanged, you had become fat, ugly, slab-like and oh so heavy. You knew I no longer found you attractive. It left us both bitter. You wanted me to enjoy my time and spend time on the forums... I felt you slowed me down... Then it happened...
You broke.
It was not a driver, or a faulty OS or even an accident involving a fall or a spilt drink. No. The letter K physically crumpled into your worn out keyboard, this was quickly followed by J becoming unresponsive, L becoming stubborn on whether it worked or not and then randomly caps lock decided to lock up completely...
Loyally we worked on together... I even hooked up a usb keyboard... But by then, we both knew... I bought a 1TB hardrive and began downloading the 30gb of our life together from your nearly full, noisy, hardrive.
...
As I write this, smugly, on my new 2 in 1, I will remember the good times. You will be consigned and be raised into the attic to be placed in the box and rest on top of the greats, the Atari 2600, the spectrum, the commodore 64, Atari ST, Amstrad mega-pc, and some nondescript 186, 286 and 386 machines...
You out lasted more than half a decade... And that my friend, was an achievement.
Goodbye. You have earned your rest. Collect dust in peace.
12
Comments
Worse... I can't decide whether to download all my games onto the hardrive... Or abandon them... My new laptop / tablet does not have a disc drive...
(In fact it is the first computer that I own that did not come with a disc drive, cd, floppy or cassette (and is a usb port just a fancy cartridge port?))
I think I agree with Ted Sider on this. My computer is the same four-dimensional space-time object.
It is the same computer... Although if you have picture evidence @BillyYank , I think that will give conclusive proof.
― Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
A picture wouldn't help, I've changed the case at least once. But it's "changed gently over time." One or two pieces at a time over the years maintains the attachment to the machine, so emotionally it's the same computer.
Oddly enough, changing the system disk doesn't count as a whole new computer as far as Windows licensing is concerned. You have to replace the motherboard to trigger that.