computer crapola for 15 july '09

Spamfest

Yesterday for whatever reason my email account got absolutely slammed with spam. And I mean really slammed. In the course of less than 30 minutes I got something to the effect of 200 to 400 of the stupid things. Granted, the filter caught most of them, but the point is that it all came down the pike just in that scope of 30 minutes. Weird.

After that half-hour it stopped just as suddenly as it happened. I guess the filter database was updated and the banhammer was dropped on some IP blocks or something. No idea.

Laptop really showing its age now

My laptop is starting to run like absolute crap. Actually I'm surprised it still runs as well as it does considering its age. It's 4 years old, which is like owning an 8-year-old desktop PC.

I've known for a while now that my laptop is living on borrowed time. Several times I've heard the click-click/chirp-chirp noise from the hard drive. Each time that's happened I wipe the drive completely and slow-format it to mark the bad sectors. So far that's worked.

These days however it's taking longer than usual for apps to load, and I get periodic "stuttering" (random pauses) for seemingly no reason.. so it may very well be the drive is about to choke again. Bleah.

On top of that, the wireless is acting a bit funky as well. Definitely doesn't keep as good of a connection as it used to. And it's not my router's fault, that I know.

I'm eventually going to have to pony up and purchase a new laptop. It will definitely be a netbook, no question. But I want it to be a netbook with Windows 7 on it because I refuse to buy another computer with XP since that OS is so antiquated (that is the OS on the laptop now).

My goal is to keep this laptop running until 2010. After the new year there should be a good selection of netbooks with Win 7 by then. If I can score one for $250 or so (which is totally in the realm of possibility), I'll definitely buy one even if it's Windows 7 Home Basic.