Monday, August 3, 2020

I got a new laptop yesterday

Poor old laptop (Flatbeast) died.  Pressing the power button failed to start him up. So I did some Web crawling, looking at laptop ads.  There are a lot of 'em.  Judging from the ad volume you would think that industry has produced plenty of laptops. I decided I wanted to touch the product and check it's key feel.  So, off to Best Buy in Lebanon I go.  They are open on Sunday.  And they had some, but not many laptops in stock.  The salesman told me that they would sell out of everything within days.  So maybe laptops are not so plentiful.  Anyhow I get out of the store with a brand new Acer Nitro R5 1650, only $669.99.   Hmm.  Poor old deceased Flatbeast only cost $300 and change five years ago.  Progress.
   So I plug it in and power it up.  It does not boot up into Windows, it boots up into Curtana, a user hostile interface from Microsoft.  Curtana forces me into opening a Microsoft account, something I didn't want to do.  I have not figured out how to dump that.  After some fiddling around I managed to link up with my desktop and start transferring files.  I got one good file transfer and then the home networking broke.  It is now demanding passwords and hints but rejecting them after I enter them.  And refusing to transfer any more files.  Gotta work on  that.  Half the reason for getting the laptop is to backup my desktop. 

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