Computer lifespan in the laptop of the gods
It’s been ten years since my last laptop was nicked. Ah, memories.
It was my own fault, really. My partner and I were halfway through our year-long stint teaching English in eastern China. Our apartment was one of hundreds of bland concrete boxes within the huge Dongying complex. Heavy metals security doors marked each entrance, with a second locked door inside.
It was a fairly secure system – there was a depressing lack of exterior windows. It really wasn’t easy for anyone to break in. Unless some careless laˇowa`i – yes, that’s me – gifted a spare set of keys to an opportunistic thief by throwing them in the rubbish.
I had tested each key on the mystery keyring first, but clearly not very thoroughly. The keys reappeared on a shelf inside our front door several weeks after I’d declared them useless and biffed them into a rubbish bag, which was then put outside our building for collection.
The cluster of keys may have returned, but our laptop and cameras were long gone, on their way to an illicit second-hand market in another city.
It’s worth saying that this was the only real vexation in our brilliant and bewildering Dongying year – on the whole, China provided us with more kindness and hospitality than we were able to repay. My blessed travel insurance helped fund a replacement, and that trusty laptop has served me with slowly decreasing reliability for the past decade.
Ten years is a long time in the life of a laptop, and the situation was getting a little ridiculous. At some point, the battery stopped working, so I trailed cords whenever I used it. Then the keyboard died, so I plugged in an external one.
The USB ports were failing, which meant that my secondary keyboard would only work if I invested a frustrating amount of time toggling the cord just so, while standing on my head and facing due west. One of the USB ports was so temperamental that the whole computer would just shut down if I was impertinent or forgetful enough to use it.
Twice, the masterful technicians at Affordable Computers brought my device back from the brink, but the time had come to look for a replacement for my faithful Asus and its armful of accessories.
Its substitute is nothing flash - pretty low-spec, and with far less personality than its predecessor. I’m in love.