Official RWA Member

I paid my dues and I'm now an official member of RWA. I'm still debating whether to go to the GWA chaper or the online fantasy/sci-fi/paranormal chapter. Both provide benefits, and while I'd like to go to the in-person meetings, the GWA meetings are quite a bit of a drive for me. It might be doable once a month, however. I'll investigate a bit more.

So I finally ended up getting a laptop. It's not a latest and greatest by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a killer deal and Office Depot offered me a special 4 year warranty, including accidental damage and one free battery replacement, for the price of a three year warranty. Now, since I know most laptops last three years maximum, and the 4th year of coverage is usually the same price as the first three combined, this is a fantastic deal. Couldn't pass it up.

For those who aren't tech savvy, my advice is to always get the maximum warranty you can when purchasing laptops. For desktop systems, the repair process is usually much faster and less expensive. For example, replacing a fan in a desktop takes 5 minutes and costs $15 in parts and labor at most shops. Replacing a fan in a laptop costs closer to $150 - $75 for the part alone, and then an hour's worth of labor.

You can skimp out on warranties on desktops if you're not afraid to plunge into computer guts - PC repair isn't difficult. I haven't had a warranty on a desktop since 1999 (at which point I became an unfortunate victim of capacitor plague in 2003, but the system would have been out of warranty anyway.) But for laptops, those warranties are worth their weight in gold. Laptop repairs are time consuming and frustrating and beyond the scope of the average home user. I've done them before, and I'd rather avoid doing them ever again.

I once had a Compaq laptop that died 4 times in two and a half years due to a poorly designed power jack, prompting the "no lemon" warranty to kick in. I got a replacement with no questions asked. My husband had three laptops replaced under that policy - and he repurchased the warranty on the replacement laptop for another 3 years, giving him essentially a new laptop for $300 each round.

The new laptop is a low-end HP, with similar specs to my 3 year old desktop system. But it's all I really need to run yWriter and Dropbox. And that's all I need to write.

Laptop Shopping

I'm running into a wall with my laptop shopping. I have a relatively low budget of $800, which has to include the 3-4 year warranty. I don't need a huge hard drive, but I want a fast one (7200 RPM minimum.) I want a large screen, but I'm more concerned with having a good resolution than having a 17" behemoth to lug around. I want at least 4 gigabytes of RAM and ideally Windows 7 64 bit. (There's no point havinga 64 bit processor, which they are almost entirely these days, but running a 32 bit OS.) I'd like a discrete graphics chip, but I don't have the cash to shell out for a true gaming laptop.

I'm also a brand snob. I won't touch an Acer (since my poor little Aspire One died after only a year and a half), a Lenovo, a Dell (*shudder*), Fujitsu, or a Gateway. (Some of this is irrational opinion as an IT professional - I've had too many Dells die before their product life cycle ended.) That leaves me with a choice of Asus, HP, and Toshiba.

I also refuse to get a recertified laptop. I'm all over that with desktops where I can muck around with the innards when things burn out, but I've done laptop repairs before and I'd rather not deal with it if I can get it covered under a warranty 4 years out.

I don't think my demands are unreasonable. The programs I use aren't exactly cutting edge - yWriter could run on a thin client, and I play a nine year old MMORPG.

But so far, I haven't had any luck.