I have a new computer. Well, “new.” The machine has been assembled from parts by my dear husband, and the software cobbled together from various secret places. The monitor is brand new: a sleek, high-def 22″ Dell flat panel I got on sale last week. The mouse is a wireless Logitech with a charging dock. The operating system is Windows 7: Evaluation Copy.

So far, I love it. Just getting used to the keyboard, tho.

For five years, I have been using the same grimy Mac Powerbook, and like a dolt, never really upgraded anything, OS-wise. So for five years, my machine has run slower and slower and become so obsolete at this point that it is now actually not possible to even upgrade to Firefox 3, for example. And did I mention the slowness. I have had to walk away from my desk on many occasions just to wait for the goddamn thing to stop spinning as it loads a web page, or opens images in Photoshop. Excruciating. This morning on my new machine, Adobe CS4 snapped eight huge JPGs open in eight seconds. Here is one of them (resized of course):

Anyway, now I have this redundant and practically useless laptop, which there’s no point in even trying to sell. But I did figure out one use for it, once I transfer all my data from it. I’ll connect it to the TV in the bedroom and use it as a DVD player! One hitch tho… no remote control. Hm.