Netbooks and sons with girlfriends...

Well, readers, when we last met I had two concurrent themes going: whether or not my son has a girlfriend, and what in the heck is wrong with my netbook?

The girlfriend issue: yep, in his own facebook words: She's this great girl that I've been seeing for the past couple of weeks. I'm glad for him, and her.

The netbook issue doesn't have as happy of an ending. There was no change in status, so I ended up taking it to my favorite repair shop on Saturday. (favorite as it doesn't charge for diagnostics, and they'd sent me a 15% off coupon at Christmastime.) Their diagnosis was a failed motherboard. Not good. They spent some time looking for a new one without success.

But the good news is that they were able to save my data (so they say, I haven't seen it yet.) I bought an external hard drive that I'm going to have them transfer the data to, then start getting into the habit of regular backups. Some stuff was backed up but I would lost some important stuff had they not been able to retrieve my data.

Now what to do about the netbook itself. 8.9"ers are not being made anymore, so an exact replacement isn't gonna happen. After beginning to do some research, found that most new netbooks aren't even XP anymore, they come with Windows 7 starter edition. The barebones edition. I'm happy with XP and it works well for me. So lets stick with XP. Found what I was looking for on Amazon.com - long battery life, XP, and hey, it's even in red. So I saved the link and decided I wanted to check locally first so that my data could be transferred directly to the new netbook.

Went out today - first stop was Meijer. No, everything was 7 starter. Then down to Best Buy where the salesman tried his hardest to move me to an Asus. And they were all 7 starter as well. Moved on to Office Max where they did have some XP that were at the warehouse and could be ordered. But only the 3 cell battery. So let's move on.

Sam's Club - 7 starter, 3 cell battery. Costco - 7 starter and I'd have to renew my Costco membership which would add $50 to the cost. Staples - 7 starter. My hopes went up at Target when I saw what I was looking for, except 3 cell battery, on clearance for $239. But out of stock now.

So here I am at the library. Just went back to Amazon.com and placed the order for the 6 cell Acer, running XP, in red. Free shipping. So much for buying local.

So tomorrow I'll take my new external hard drive to the computer place and get the data from my old netbook. Not sure if the old battery will fit on the new computer, but it still has plenty of juice left in it so will probably try to sell it if it doesn't fit on the new computer.

And in a week or so I'll have a new netbook. Hope this one lasts longer than a year and a few months. If it doesn't it'll be the last Acer product I'll buy.