Reconfiguring my life

My HP Spectre laptop has turned out to be rather a disappointment.

No—a big disappointment.

Fourteen months after I bought it (so—just after the one-year warrantee expired), it developed hardware problems that required me sending it to HP to replace the motherboard, to the tune of $450. Then, around last Autumn—so, a year after I got the repaired machine back—it started crashing unexpectedly when docked (at the HP station).

Well, in my usual fashion, I delayed, but the tariff-happy Kleptocrat taking office was the forcing function that actually got me to buy an Asus (because I am not ready at this stage of my life to change operating systems); I ordered it through Best Buy right around the New Year.

But then, in my usual fashion, I faffed about because I didn’t want to have to go through the tsuris of standing up a new instance of O365, transferring all my files and finding or replacing all my passwords to online sites, portals, services, etc. The passwords alone include:

My home wireless network
Three email accounts (plus connecting two of them to Outlook)
Bluesky, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook
Microsoft (the only time I ever use this one is when I have to set up a new computer
Bitdefender
Teams (can’t use my Microsoft password, because my Skype account predated MSFT buying and then killing it)
AdBlock
Not a password, but I’ll have to install the driver to my printer as well
Well, last Friday, the Spectre crashed four times in a row while docked. I also got a message saying the Intel memory was degrading, so I should turn it off. Moreover, take a look at this machine; see the gap between the base and the top?

And the bottom case is coming apart:

I reckoned it was time. I finally pulled the machine out of the shipping box, plugged it in and then spent 30 minutes finding the network password, because it wouldn’t do anything until it was connected. Then it updated itself for about an hour or two, while it tried to get me to become enthusiastic about Copilot. (No.)

I moved all my files to OneDrive, so I hope that will make transferring them to the Asus less painful than the old method. And I set up my two email accounts in Outlook, but that’s as far as I’ve got. I’m taking my time.

But I have one question: why is the keyboard light up like a runway?

Oh—and who thought it was a good design idea to put the power key right next to the delete key?

 

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