I try not to buy laptops too often. Yes, a new one is an object of desire - the sleek, gleaming carapace, the click of the keys, the long battery life. But soon, the chemicals in the battery will get tired, tiny scratches will dull the finish, and dead skin cells will accumulate under the keys, turning that crisp click into a dull squish. Buying a new laptop can eat up all your spare time for two weeks - read reviews, decide on a model, find a decent price, inventory the software on the OLD machine, locate all the install disks, downloads, and backups, install everything on the NEW machine, make sure everything is updated ... It's herculean, I tell you. Augean, even (look it up!).

But sometimes life doesn't give you a choice. My wife's old IBM ThinkPad T20 is starting to cough up blood - the screen goes out and only turns back on with a sharp slap on the side (we tech gurus call that "percussive maintenance"), and the operating system is crapped up with old installs, uninstalls, spyware, spyware removal programs that threw up, died and gummed it up even more, and ghosts of old programs. So I go to the miraculous, amazing, Fry's down in Manhattan Beach. I have their Sunday LA Times insert, laptops circled.

Unfortunately, the earliest I could get to Fry's is Thursday. None of the prices are good any more. It seems you need to buy a laptop on Sunday or Monday to get the prices. Best Buy, too, starts its sales on Sunday. Get in quick, or they'll try to sell you Model What-You-Were-Looking-For-Plus-One, for an extra $200. One nasty, unexpected, wrinkle. I wanted my wife's new laptop to have Windows XP Pro, not the new Vista operating system. I don't want her to suffer through another learning curve. Honesty moment: I don't want to suffer through another learning curve. I'm tech support here, so I suffer for every new revenue-enhancing decision Redmond makes. I want her to have pretty much the same setup as she has now, but faster, newer and prettier.

Used to be, you could pull the hard drive out of your old computer, slap it in the new one, and, bingo, you're done. That, sadly, isn't true anymore. First, different hardware require different little bits of software, called "drivers," to make them work. That little button that makes the volume go up and down? Needs a driver. The trackpad? Needs a driver. Each motherboard, video card, sound card, monitor, keyboard, modem, they all need drivers. New laptop? All new drivers. So, you really do want to perform a fresh install of an operating system on a new computer, so that it will configure itself to that particular machine.

BUT, computer companies aren't issuing their drivers for Windows XP anymore. It's a Vista world now, like it or not. Go along, apparently, or go Apple. As much as I admire the iMacs, I don't want to invest the multi-thousands for the machine and all new software, and the multi-hours learning and teaching them. I try to arrange for some time off in my life so I can slump into a chair with a blank stare on my face, and a thin string of spittle hanging off of my lower lip. Too little of that these days, what with work, family, house, car, and new laptops.

Also, to protect Microsoft's revenue, each install of Windows is keyed to a particular computer. Swap out the hard drive, and she will not boot. It's a copy protection scheme, and legit, I guess, but I don't have to like it. So I can't just swap hard drives, and I can't do a new install of XP on a new laptop with Vista on it (a process ridiculously called a "downgrade"). Correction: you CAN do it, but it's hard and there's no support. I found people who had laboriously found drivers from the component makers' websites and made it all work. I think I could do that, but that would definitely cut into slumping blank-stare spittle time.

And if anything doesn't work, don't count on Rajiv in Bangalore to help. You're on your own. Turns out there is ONE, and only one, laptop maker who still provides the choice of Windows XP, and that is Dell. I like the Latitude line - they always rank high on "torture-test" articles. Yes, Dell is famous for horrible tech support (long waits, phone trees, impenetrable accents on low-paid employees slavishly following scripts that don't help you, any departure from which will get them fired), but I am gambling on being able to solve any problems myself, with the help of forums.

Next week: wherein your narrator configures new Dell Latitude D520 for his loving, if sometimes captious, wife.
Coming soon: where can I get me one of them PHEVs, anyway?

Peter Basch

Also Read: Momma's got a brand new laptop, part II