The best bunch of flowers EVER.

[reddragdiva]

arkady and I hit Tottenham Court Road yesterday on a Computational Odyssey: find a PC for redcountess to use. Because we were both going stir-crazy trying to share a machine. Liz was also interested in a blobby keyboard (Microsoft Natural or reasonable imitation), and I have decided that the solution to my RSI-like twinges is a USB trackpad. (I had a trackpad on the laptop I used at Ericsson Australia a couple of years ago, and it was marvellous.)

After a couple of hours trekking through every damned store on the Street of Shiny Things, we discovered that:

1. USB trackpads have never been heard of, except at Maplin, where they've been discontinued, apparently because they "gave us too much trouble."
2. The only place we saw blobby keyboards was PC World.
3. Secondhand boxes cost too damn much.
4. I want a 12" Powerbook. Failing that, a really teensy-tiny Vaio. *sob*

Eventually we came across a computer market and I found this here IBM Personal Computer 300PL (model 6862-N2U - PIII-450, 64MB RAM, USB) for One Hundred Quid. Which is a nice deal. Even if it is, heh heh, the same model of computer that redcountess used at T*l*t*ch. Got some jeans without a great big rip in the arse, then swung back via PC World for the blobby keyboard. (Which, at Fifty Quid, was more than I've paid for some computers. And it's a lot bigger than it looks in that picture.) Then home for a geeky picnic of installation, pizza and copious strong drink.

(High on crack or something, I also got two 256MB PC133 DIMMs [CL=3, non-parity] without being very careful to check that what I was getting was actually just the right thing for the box in question. Which only takes up to 128MB DIMMs [PC100/133, CL>=2, non-parity]. So now I have two DIMMs that don't work in Liz's box or mine. Cost price - £30 each - or going rate to a good home.)

The box is not too bad, and will be even nicer with the right memory. Microsoft hardware seems to be as nice as their software is horrible - the keyboard not only feels lovely, it forces you to type properly. And we even found the right Windows driver for the Sun 19" monitor (which is actually a Sony 20E20 under the Sun badges). The monitor also doubles as a room heater.

(If you have one of these boxes and despair of finding the right video driver for the S3 Trio3D: JGC's Tweaked Savage Driver Site.)

(Fuck, I hate Windows.)

Today I installed Liz's CD burner and hard drive (though Windows thinks it's not a DOS disk, so we'll have to try some data recovery in mine) and untangled cables. The computer, monitor, keyboard and trackball have now been set up in the perfect position to use in bed for hours at a time. Except when the shiny blue ball falls out and rolls across the floor.

We now no longer need fight over the machine. Now (until I secure a lengthy Ethernet cable) we'll just be fighting over the connection.