I hate buying computers

I know, those who now me doubt that statement.  Just because as I set here typing I have 5 if them in or just out of arm's reach. Well, actually there are a couple more.  That is why I went shopping.

My old faithful laptop

decided to quit on me.  I had it at the family reunion doing a little writing on it.  I put it in the camper and brought it home.  When I tried to fire it up it wouldn't.  The power light would come on, the hard drive light would light and blink, then it just turned itself off.  The display never did come on.  A friend has the same laptop, and his recently turned all 4 feet in the air and died.  Well, actually his power jack broke.  Doing some looking I found that seems to be a common problem.  The only good solution is replace the motherboard.
So, is that my problem? I called my computer repair shop and told them I was trying to decide if it was worth the 25 miles drive each way to bring it over and leave it, then come back 25 miles each way to pick it up.  After talking about how it was acting and what the possibilities are I was convinced the problem was going to cost more than it was worth putting into this laptop.

Maybe the monitor is bad.  Or just a video driver.  So I plugged in my desktop monitor and turned it on.  I found some kind of Dell diagnostic program running ... until the computer quit working.  Hmmm... Tried again.  This time I got a blue screen of death, one that give an error code that only means something to a hard core geek. So I tried again, to get a totally different result.

So, do a search for dell inspiron 1000 problem.  Whole bunch of results.  All of which point toward replacing the mother board.  Do it yourself for $150 or have it done for $300.  And that may or may not solve the problem but you won;t know until you replace it.

OK now it's time to go shopping.

The problem with computer shopping is you KNOW you will be wrong.  Regardless of what you buy there will be a better deal with a better computer, probably next door to where you just bought yours. I've decided you figure out what you want to do and spend time with a (gasp!) salesman.   I started to say salesperson, but I have found in the computer world there are very few knowledgeable women.  There are some, but not many.  If you find one she is fantastic, but she is rare.

So I wondered over to Staples. It is "Back-To-School" time.  So there are some laptops at pretty good prices.  I looked around.  I talked.  I admitted my ignorance. I liked it back when your choices were between the SX and DX version of the 486 processor.  I remember hearing 2 computer salesmen arguing over whether it was justified putting a 40 meg hard drive in a computer when all the customer would ever use was 20 meg.

I'm getting to be an old geek.

I haven't got a clue what the difference is between an I3 and an I7 processor. Do I really need a blu-ray DVD player in my computer? And a fingerprint scanner .. in my computer? But I do know enough to know a computer should have as much memory (RAM, not hard drive capacity) as possible ... and with a laptop it is always better buying it already in there instead of adding it later.  I also was pretty sure I wanted an HP or a Toshiba. There are other less-name brands, but I wanted one of those two.  I wanted a number pad like my desktop keyboards.  And I wanted to be able run an xP program not available as a later version.

They had an HP on sale with 6 gig of RAM, a nice big screen, and a keyboard with a number pad built in.  And the helpful friendly ready to take my money salesman said if I upgraded to the pro version Windows 7 would do just what I wanted.

Well, we'll see about that some other time.

But I took a deep breath and bought it, an HP Pavilion dv7.

Cost less than the first several computers I bought and does more. I7 processor (whatever that means.  My salesman said it meant it was better than an I3), Blu-ray optical drive, 17.3" monitor, 6 gig of RAM, finger print scanner, etc.

Following my normal logic, after I bought it I looked it up.  PC MAG reviewed it (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388455,00.asp) and said :

HP Pavilion dv7-6163us

• editor rating good
• user ratings (1) very good

• Pros
  Large screen. Outstanding battery life.
• Cons Not good for gaming. Display resolution too small for 1080p. No USB 3.0 ports.
  
• Bottom Line
  With a roomy display and a good selection of hardware, the HP Pavilion dv7-6163us offers more than a typical mainstream system—but a full-blown (and full-powered) desktop replacement it is not.

Not good for gaming.  DARN! (OK, if you know me my gaming consists of Spider Solitare, which came with it BTW).  It is more powerful than a similar sized laptop a friend bought as a backup for his business use few years ago for $2500.  That's about my style, not the latest and greatest but a good bang for the buck.

I decided to mess with the old Dell.  Took the hard drive out (only 2 screws!) and put it in an external hard drive enclosure I have.  I had to take the HD out of the enclosure, but no big deal.  Just 2 more screws.  Put it in, plugged it into my desktop, and it fired right up.  I can't pull data off it, but I can see it.  More hmmmm....  I can buy a rebuilt mother board for $139.  I may risk it and see if I can get this one to work again so I can pull some data off it.  If I can it would be a great laptop for the shop. Or I may just set it next to the older Dell laptop I have on a shelf someplace.