While flying through the twitterverse I came upon a tweet for a contest to win an HP Pavilion DV5 laptop from HP and the blog The Culture of Me. What an awesome opportunity! It has been my dream/desire to have a nice new computer. A laptop would be ideal.
I’ve seen the DV5 in stores and online and coveted it from first glance. It’s large glassy screen, back-lit keyboard, myriads of ports for extra devices and external storage and a DVD-RW! Not to mention the capacity of the hard drive and the RAM memory which will make this a blazing fast companion. Oh, and the portability, oh the portability.
It is rare that I show my workspace because, well, I’m rather embarrassed by it.
This little corner has become my work nook for the past couple weeks. My parents had come across a free Sauder desk (which my DH thinks is CRAP) that would double my workspace and offer more drawers for storage. So, I gave away my old desk and moved my pc to this table in the corner until I have the time and back strength to put together the “new” one.
Back to the point of my story, the desktop tower you see in the corner is a conglomeration of parts and pieces that have been scavanged from three old computers. The only thing that is original is the motherboard and processor, fan and floppy drive. All the other pieces were add ons from dead PCs and they are on their last legs. I was really disappointed that my last pc died because it had a much faster processor. This one is approximately 600 MHz and my old one was 2 GHz with 1GB of RAM. Some glitch between the OS and the USB kept forcing it to reboot and not work properly until the power supply “blew up” and fried the motherboard. I was lucky to be able to pull the hard drive out of that tower relatively unscathed. But that little metal box didn’t do much for me all on it’s own. Thankfully, my parents had an old PC that was just sitting collecting dust that they said I could have. I took it all apart and added in my components that I used frequently. So, I didn’t lose all my documents or the ability to watch DVDs, but man did I lose speed.
I run five blogs, my social networking accounts, affiliate accounts and do my webmaster work from this POS pc. What should take me a few minutes usually takes me up to an hour. Actually, I am typing this in Notepad because trying to type this in my WordPress control panel in Firefox takes too long; it can’t keep up. I don’t even try to use IE8; WAY too slow. It is frustrating. Not only the lack of speed, but the lack of portability also. I wish I didn’t have to be tied to my desk. Even if I didn’t get a desktop replacement, but something that I could easily carry around the house or around town would be great.
My DD, Yeyda, likes playing computer games and I’d gladly give this PC to her to play with, but then I don’t have anything with which to work. She is not shy about opening and typing and moving things so I am a little leery about giving her control of my one connection to the outside world and my work. I know we could probably get her something from Leapfrog or Fisher Price that would fit the bill of what she likes to do, but I’d also like her to get used to using a PC. Eventually, that will become a more integral part of her education and it’s better to acclimate her now.
So, if by some freak chance I actually did win this Pavilion DV5 it would provide me with the tools, speed and portability I so desperately seek. I’d be able to do my photo editing on the fly in my living room, bedroom or the car (when I’m not driving). It would be easier to keep track of and make edits to my blogs and websites while I’m away from home or meeting with clients. Sometimes it is difficult to remember everything a person says and be able to develop the idea correctly. My DH, client number one, has lots of ideas, but he won’t write them down nor will he remember them once they leave his mouth. Humph! He is very visual so trying to explain a concept or how you are going to do something is almost impossible. He shuts down. If I can show him, wow, that would be so much better.
Go to The Culture of Me and learn about who they are and what they do by watching the video they have posted. Then do some posting of your own on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Buzz, StumbleUpon, etc., etc., and blog about it too if you’d like.
Firstly, I’m a mom and wife. Professionally, IT consulting is my job and blogging is the outlet for my passions. I write about things that affect the everyday life of a stay-at-home parent or any parent for that matter such as parenting, relationships, discipline, the media, product reviews, giveaways, social media, food, cooking, gardening and anything else that might come my way.
