Upgrading Downsizing

My MacBook Pro laptop computer is a hand-me-down from Dave.

In April it will be five years old. In computer years, that is ancient. Recently it started showing signs of senility.

Sometimes it would remember we have DSL and connect to it automatically. Sometimes it would remember we have DSL but need prompting to connect. Sometimes it would totally forget we have DSL. Frustrating.

Sometimes it would recognize my Bluetooth mouse. Sometimes it would turn off Bluetooth without prompting. When my mouse stopped working I changed its batteries before finding out out my computer decided to turn off Bluetooth. Twice. Irritating.

None of this is life threatening, of course, but I couldn’t help but wonder what would decide to stop working next. And what would happen to my data if it decided that was what it should mess with now? Yes, I do backups. Weekly and monthly ones. With my luck it would decide to corrupt my data the day before a backup so I would lose a week’s worth of work then have to guess what all I’d done that week. Or worse, corrupt my data just before a backup without me noticing so I would create a corrupt backup.

I decided to be proactive rather than reactive. Time to buy a new computer.

You faithful readers know I am planning to buy a very small RV soon. With its small space and weight capacity. That made this a good time to downsize my computer. Right?

But I didn’t want to downsize capacity in any way. Just weight and size.

Behold my new BackBook Air!

Smaller in every dimension.

   

But big enough to let me see what I need to see

and type what I need to type.

And it finds our DSL every single time.

I am happy again.

So, two computers. What to do with the old one? Nextworth.com offered me $32 for it. Well, it IS nearly five years old.

So I asked our daughter if she wants it. She doesn’t have internet at home so its failure to connect automatically would not bother her. She uses a trackpad instead of a mouse so the Bluetooth flakiness would not be an issue for her. Its at least as reliable as the one she’s using now but is an upgrade for her. She said sure. So for $20 shipping my old computer is on it’s way to belonging to a third member of our family. And we’re all happy. As long as we remember to do our backups. Our daughter should maybe start doing hers daily.

TTYL,

Linda

ps. Down 34.8 pounds now.