Computer trouble

Remember that one time, a couple of weeks ago, when I talked about avoiding buying things I don't need? You're going to think this post contradicts everything I said then, but I promise it doesn't.

I got this laptop for Christmas in 2005. From that day on, it's been quietly reliable. (It's amazing how long these things will last when open water bottles don't get knocked over onto them.) I've brought it to work with me every day in my JanSport backpack (itself at least ten years old), and it's gotten me through countless slideshows and trivia games for classes.

When I leave school, I stop at the genkan to change from my school shoes into my outside shoes. I pack the school shoes in my backpack, since I alternate between Tsushima High and Toyotama High. As I do this, I put my backpack down. I try to put it down gently, but sometimes (especially when I had to catch the bus, before getting my license) it makes a less-than-soft landing.

Thankfully, this hasn't kept the computer from functioning. Sometime around October, though, I noticed it was making a rather loud whirring noise. After a few minutes, I realized it was coming from the heat sink and cooling fan. The best I can figure out is that one of its harder falls (or accumulative damage from several smaller falls) jostled the fan just enough to cause the vibration of the spinning blades to rattle the casing. It doesn't hurt the performance of the laptop, but it does make a distinct noise, especially noticeable in quiet staffrooms.

This bothered me, but I wasn't about to buy a new laptop just because my current one sounds funny. A couple of weeks before I flew home for Christmas, though, it got worse. I was Skypeing a friend of mine, and she was having trouble hearing me. I tried everything I could think of--restarting my computer, changing the webcam's USB port, closing everything but Skype--but nothing fixed it.

A day or two later, I was listening to music on my computer through my headphones. I turned on a quiet song, and had to turn up the volume to hear it better. As I turned it up, though, I noticed a distinct whirring coming through my headphones. That was the problem: the vibrations from the whirring fan were being picked up by my headphones and my webcam's microphone.

I don't need my computer to run games spectacularly, start up quickly, or run quietly. I do, however, need it to talk to family and friends back home. Counting myself lucky for the problem having occurred right before I went home, I tried troubleshooting. I poked around through Google, finding several spare parts stores, but nobody carried the right part for my model. I resigned myself to getting a new laptop.

I waited for the after-Christmas sales, and made a trip to Best Buy and Circuit City every day after the road trip. Scoffing at anything over $1,000, I kept my eye on the clearance models. I saw several Vaio laptops that fit the bill, and waited a couple of days, wondering if the price would fall even more.

I finally found a returned item whose price sticker didn't match the model printed on the box. When I asked a worker about it, and she scanned it, the price turned out to be a bit higher. According to the box, it ran Vista 64-bit, and included a Blu-Ray player and burner. I didn't care in the slightest about any of those, but it did explain the jump in price. There was a 20% discount on returned items for that day, though, so the price ended up being under $600.

More than a bit nervous about such a big purchase, and wary of its having been returned already, I triple-checked on the return policy before toting it up to the checkout line. I got it home, fired it up, and made sure to check everything out before even thinking about relaxing.

Vista 64-bit is a headache sometimes, mainly because I can't find any free firewall programs compatible with it. (ZoneAlarm has a free beta available, but it sometimes makes my system crash.) However, it does the one thing I need it to do: it runs Skype. It also has a built-in camera that's much better than my old USB webcam, which is an added bonus.