A little tale regarding me and shiny shopping. Okay, a sad tale.
Remember I went an’ got a new little laptop? Remember? Remember I mentioned it was running Windows
8? Remember? No? You don’t remember? In that case, it’s likely nothing here today will interest you so you may as well go do something else. Right, you gone? Anyone still here, please continue.
Windows 8? It be pretty cool once you find your way round and, man, she be starting in a flash!!
No, really, a flash. Mere seconds is all.
One thing that was driving me nuts all the same, was the, wrongly named in my opinion, Charm Bar.
Right, it’s great, and it’s the gate to so much, but the sucker would pop up as soon as my fingers went anywhere near the track pad. After a little registry hack, yup, me hacking the registry*, it’s nicely tucked away
and can be activated in a flash, no, really, a flash, when needed. *I’d better come clean with this hacky stuff - you can download a little thingy that does it all, safely, for you. Let’s be honest, Roughnecks and the
registry just weren’t designed for each other.
When I unpacked the machine, in amongst the 4 Kilos of packaging, although there wasn’t a destruction
book, there was a little black bag and inside the little black bag was a little black rag which I cleverly deduced was for cleaning the screen. They’re getting fancy eh? I’ve always cleaned laptop screens with a gentle
mixture of carbolic soap and bleach in boiling water applied liberally with a big sponge, rinsed off with a garden hose and quick-dried on top of a hot central heating radiator. This always seemed to serve me well for the
very limited life-span of my past laptops.
Anyhoo, as I now had a rag-in-a-bag, I thought I’d make the screen gleam.
As soon I started my heart sank. The display started doing all kinds of weird stuff and jumping
all over the place. Man, how I wished I’d stuck to my tried and tested screen cleaning method. What to do - back to the store? I’ll need the receipt I guess. Where is it? In the trash? Oh boy, that it is. Hope the
store likes egg and tomatoes.
Then, and only then, did I have one of those, ‘waaaaaiiit a minute’ moments.
Tentatively I touched the screen with an egg and tomato coated finger. Nothing. Tentatively I moved
said finger. See what a sad shiny shopper I am? It’s a touch screen! I got a touch screen and didn’t even know it. I’ve got a touch screen!! How about then? A touch screen!! By the way, as sad as this is, I’d
appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone else. Thanks.
Following on from that revelation I decided to explore the possibility that the screen may also be
removable from the keyboard to become a tablet. Like wot you see on TV.
I eventually found the right angle between screen and keyboard and after a bit of wiggling and levering
with a small tyre iron, the screen did indeed detach from the keyboard but, seeing the amount of broken bits of plastic lying around, that’d exploded off both parts like shrapnel, and the alarming number of parted wires
protruding from both bits, I’m guessing they’re not designed to be separated. No tablet there then.
Now, where’s that damn receipt again..... By the way, as sadder as this is getting, I’d appreciate
it if you didn’t tell anyone else. Thanks.
Quote; Dave Barry.
“Bill Gates is a very rich man today... you want to know why? The answer’s one word; versions.”
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