Hey, I am just sitting here, with a 3.5 pound laptop on my lap, and a nine pound cat...

Yeah you guessed it my monitor went out. I have been roughing it for just about a week. I don't miss the monitor all that much, but the lack of a mouse is killing me.

In just a couple of days I will not need my desktop at all and I can throw the monitor right out amd put the laptop right where the monitor is now. Or buy a nice new LCD monitor. Dang, but those things are expensive; I could just as well buy a whole new laptop.

As far as the laptop goes, I have been using it almost exclusively now. I would say entirely but I have not hooked up the printer yet. The whole thing worked out entirely differently from what I expected. I had never planned on having Windows XP but suddenly I do and it sure does get the job done. I really did want to make a go of Linux full time but it just didn't happen for me, no doubt due to the severe emotional problems of thes particular computer. The Free BSD I have installed as a dual boot works up tp a point. There is no Flash which I can live with and it tends to lose my settings for some odd reason.

Mostly, I just don't have the time to learn a new process for something I can do in Windows without thinking. Somebody sends me a Word document or even a JPG and suddenly I need to switch over to Windows to get it taken care of quickly.

I do see the need for *nix in my life. Dual booting ain't so bad. I can make this work.

I just wish this computer weren't so fruity when running UNIX.