Moving Up the Tech Ladder

Today, Adam and I found ourselves in line at Best Buy to buy a computer. Since we ended up with a little extra money, and since he needs a better computer for writing papers and I need one for keeping up with my classes and writing articles, and since I bought our old computer the summer before graduate school six years ago, we went ahead and moved ourselves up the technology ladder a rung or two.

We didn't buy a Mac or anything -- we aren't that cool or rich -- but got a laptop with enough power and memory to supply all our immediate needs: store pictures and videos of Lily, process words we type, navigate the interwebs, and stream video from the internet without skipping a bazillion times.

There was a moment when at the store that we looked at each other with that are-we-doing-the-right-thing look, as we are not ones to throw our money around capriciously, but I'm fairly confident that the pros outweigh the cons. For instance, I worked on my syllabus in Microsoft Word 2007 (definitely a con and a mean and nasty trick on the part of Microsoft! The shame!) but was able to work at lightning speed, slipping easily onto the internet and back to my document without having to wait ten minutes for the computer to catch up.

I can't imagine how much of my life I've lost because of that old computer. It's being demoted to Adam's official Facebook poker computer and Quicken program holder (because we don't want to buy a new version). It was well loved, but it is certainly time to move on.