Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Pondering my options- On the fence about buying a new computer.

As everyone knows from last week’s blog, my laptop has a dead cooling fan. But until the box from the Dell Depot arrives, I’m working with it as long as I can. And if it doesn’t show up, I may just buy a fan off ebay, take a screwdriver to it and fix it myself. I am A+ Certified and know my way around a computer.
My first laptop a Dell Inspiron 2500 died in July of 2007. When that computer broke, I was stuck without a computer from July of 2007 up until about October of 2008. E-mails piled up and my writing career was on hold for over a year. I had to work from loose-leaf paper to do my revisions on old stories. I felt like I took a huge step back.
I don’t want to wind up in that situation again. Especially with two clients who want me to help them with publishing their books. I’ve gained a lot of momentum and I can’t afford to lose it due to equipment failures.
This is the second component to break on this computer. Back in October of 2010, the DVD drive died. Thankfully I replaced it via the extended warranty. Now the cooling fan is fried. And on some occasions when playing DVDs or watching You Tube, the processor mysteriously spikes to 100% and locks up the machine. I don’t know how much longer this computer has. So I’m pondering buying a replacement sooner rather than later.
To buy that new computer, Short-term I’m going to make some tough choices. My savings are getting tight. But long-term I need a reliable computer to continue getting e-mails, looking for work and writing this wonderful blog.
Unfortunately, if I buy that new computer All About Nikki is going to get postponed even further or even cancelled. I can’t afford to self-publish two titles in a year and buy a new computer too. No one is buying enough books for that to happen yet.
I hate to take a title off the queue, but I feel it’s necessary setback to keep my overall progress going.
If no box arrives, articles will be back on Saturday.

 Oh and can anyone tell me if I can use my Windows based printer and scanner on a Windows partition of a Mac?  Really would appreciate the help.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry to hear about your computer woes. Whether you can use your printer etc. with a Mac depends on what printer you have. However, these days many Macs come with all kinds of printer drivers or you can get them online, so you don't have a problem if you don't have them. Good luck!

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