Star letter

I wanted to give my Dell XPS L702X laptop the biggest birthday present I could give it as it reaches a significant milestone that might well have got the Queen’s attention… if it were human. No, it’s not 100, but instead it’s gone well past the 3-5 years’ lifespan often given for laptops these days and has reached the prime old age of ten years.

I’m so proud of it. From its humble starting point of Windows 7, it’s now on Windows 11. Yes, it’s not the ideal candidate for that OS, but it’s performing admirably with no noticeable difference to its twin sibling, Windows 10 on the dual boot. As with most its age it’s suffered minor scratches and looks a tad unpolished in places. Most of the keys are worn, but that’s not a problem for us hardcore keyboard people to glide across its surface. Its right trackpad button broke many years ago, and just this year the left monitor hinge snapped on its plastic casing, leaving me to perform quite an invasive surgery to remove the hinge before it threatened to break other parts off. It’s also had some cosmetic surgery over the years in the form of a new hip – well, an SSD – to replace the lagging hard disk. Oh, it was such a joy to see it running about like a child after this new lease of life.

Other than that, it’s still the laptop I paid good money for ten years ago when it came with an Intel i5-2430m CPU, 3GB Nvidia GeForce GT 555M graphics, a Blu-Ray player and some 6GB of DDR3 memory. In a world where laptops just don’t last this long these days, it’s hopefully more than compensated for its carbon footprint.

Please can you wish my laptop a very happy tenth birthday and help it connect with other laptop relatives that might be out there with other readers still being their daily driver. Stephen Murley