Lappy 266!

I finally dragged my old Compaq 1655 laptop kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It did not go quietly, and it's still grumbling about it, but here I am posting from it. Gone is it's Win98 OS, 4 gig drive and clogged pile of files and junk. Gone also is the last remnants of my original wireless network dating from 1998. I was WiFi well before it even had that name. In it's place is a 20 gig drive, Win2k, a streamlined minimum of software (a necessity given the machine's lousy 64meg of RAM, sadly limited by the hardware to a maximum of 96megs) and 802.11a/b/g wireless. I can finally use this thing in a modern environment (as long as I am patient enough to let it's 266 P-II do it's thing) until the day it gets replaced or supplanted by a modern laptop. It's internal modem is not useable with Win2k, so dialup away from home will need an external solution or PC card.

Had this been a typical desktop PC built by me as all the others around here are, it would have long been upgraded or scrapped, the latter being more likely. Being that the thing cost nearly 3 grand when new, I could not bring myself to chuck it. It gets used when I travel, and also when working on cars. I am jonesing for a new laptop for a while, but I can now hold off for a bit while I use the money for more pressing issues, like making the Mini Cooper go stupid fast.

The longer I wait, the better the laptops get, and cheaper. More than likely I will end up with some mid-to-high end PC again, because it will have to hang around for 7 years or so like this one.

Now, what to get...