A New Laptop

I got a new Dell laptop last week. At first there was significant trauma. My plan had been to immediately upgrade it to Windows 10 (it came with Windows 8.1). The install proceeded so slowly that I decided it was hung and let the recovery process take it back to Windows 8.1. After trying to make the upgrade again with a slightly different process – and stalling again – I looked at the Dell support site and discovered others were having the same problem. I initiated a chat with Dell Support and they scheduled a technician to replace the SSD with one from another vendor. That happen about 48 hours later. And things began to get a lot better.

As soon as Windows 10 was working, I got Office 365 working on the machine (my husband already had the account set up). Then I installed Firefox, Fitbit, and Photoshop Elements. I transitioned from Chrome to Firefox as my default browser and was surprised that the transition was so easy. Fitbit was more challenging – probably because I didn’t read the instructions for installing Fitbit Connect carefully enough. The one that took the most finesse was Photoshop Elements because its catalog and the location of photos has to be kept in sync. It was a relief when everything was working by the end of the week.

A new external monitor was delivered on Saturday and I set it up on Sunday. I quickly decided that I would use the USB ports on the monitor rather than the hub I had been using (the new laptop only has 2 USB ports). I was surprised at how much that change reduced the cable clutter around the laptop!

I’m always excited when I get a new machine. This one is the most noticeable performance delta ever: the SSD improves the speed of everything and the machine is very quiet.

One discovery from this past week: all the Zentangles and mediation don’t help me overcome the frustration of tech not working as I expect. There were times when I had to stop doing anything with the laptop…calm down…and come back to work on it again! I am thrilled with the machine at this point but it took be about a week to make it so.

The main part of office is on a corner table (set up now with old laptop, new monitor, and new laptop in view and a printer taking up the extra space in the corner which used to be needed for the monitor before flat screens became the norm). And just behind and to the right of the new laptop is a great view of the forest leading down to the Middle Patuxent River.