Black Friday 2013 and a New Laptop

I went shopping in Alpena, with Hal's sister but not until after 10 am. We shopped a lot. Peebles, JC Penney, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Tractor Supply. We went to a few places to return items or just run errands that needed doing. We had lunch at our favorite all you can eat Chinese restaurant. And we went to Staples where I bought a new laptop that I am using right now. Normally, I wouldn't be up at 3 am but I couldn't sleep. A combination of indigestion and insomnia. So I am downloading updates and writing in this blog while that happens.

I bought another Dell. I liked my old Dell desktop and my last laptop even though the laptop has been misbehaving these last few months, random crashes, the battery is toast, I can't close the lid or it crashes the operating system, using the SD card reader results in the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. So it was time and I waited for Black Friday to find something. I bought a touch screen. Most of the machines out there are running windows 8 (there are a few 7 machines left but I wanted to go with the newer tech.) and a lot of them are not touch screens which I find ridiculous as windows 8 was designed for the touch interface. That interface adds to the cost of the machine though so it was tough getting one cheap. I found one at Staples for $399 plus tax. I had it on my wish list at Amazon with a number of others and they actually had it for the same price with no tax but by the time I got around to ordering it jumped above $400. Then I saw the staples add though in the store itself it still listed for $499, they had to honor their own online price.

It's different, and a little frustrating trying to navigate. It doesn't help that I am tired. But I am finally getting the OS to update and then I can download the 8.1 version which is supposed to be less buggy than 8.0. Later I will discuss my experience with this machine. Incidentally the model is the Inspiron i15RV-6143. Not the fastest processor they sell but it's got to be faster than the 4 year old machine I've been using. But that's enough for now, I think the initial download is almost done. I'd like to finish that up and see if I can finally fall asleep.