Looking for ... laptop ?

Ok - I was looking for Serenity the other day. Still not there yet but getting closer.

I could do with more uninterrupted sleep, aided by me worrying the bad bits of me a bit less. (Itch leads to scratch leads to more itch leads to no sleep) I am improving, I just have to avoid making it worse because I can make it worse much quicker than it gets better.

But I was feeling good enough yesterday evening to go hunting up at the Mall. (For more than laptops). First stop - PC World and a peek at their laptops. Not much joy here, they were ripping up their laptop area, presumably in preparation for the next ones coming in. Keeping an eye on it as there's another week of a £100 cashback offer.

Besides - they're not selling what I want at the moment. I've pretty much eliminated being interested in anyone's laptop except Acer. We've had good times with Acer kit, they've done well for us. This one is coming up to 4 years old and is still going strong. Ok, it's not good with the HD video but it still copes with everything else I throw at it. It could do with the keyboard being attacked with cleany stuff though.

What's on offer ? 14 or 15" laptops (or a Shiny 13" ultrabook) with or without touchscreens. That's ok - but I want more lines on my screen than these laptops have. I don't really care about a touchscreen. Down that road leads grubby screens from fingerprints. I do care about having a proper HD screen and that's because of apps like iTunes which don't let you change the text size. I may have a fight with iTunes anyway because I fully intend to put an old version on because they took a leaf out of Microsoft's book and make v11 an abomination.

So - they're not selling what I want at the moment but there's two more reasons why I'm not buying right now :

The old laptop is still going strong (just about)
The new laptop cost more than I want to spend.

This laptop cost £450, the touchscreen 15" Acer costs £600 with a £100 discount. That's a lot of cash. Perhaps it's inflation over the 4 years I've owned the laptop but you know what ? Computer prices don't really change. The specs change but the prices don't. With the desktop bits lists I build, the "acceptable" spec changes according to the time but they always end up around the same price. Unless I play with a very silly spec, in which case I can put the price in the thousands. Yet they're asking us to pay a lot more for laptops now than I think we should be.

Yep. I have fun sometimes with those bits lists, although they're not as exotic as they used to be. Multiple SSD drives just isn't the same as pricing up a second tower to contain a 7 drive SCSI array.

Ok ok - too geeky ? Maybe :-)

But. I wasn't seriously looking for a laptop last night, there's just that tantalising offer there.

I was however ... looking for blurays. There just happened to be a major movie release yesterday (Star Trek Into Darkness) and I'm now watching the first movie in prep for the second (not tonight, maybe tomorrow). The new Trek movies have violently divided opinion. Some people think they're a worse abomination than Office 10 or Windows 8. Some people think they're a fresh reimagination.

I liked what they did with the second in particular. I'm looking forward to watching it again.

I also picked up Oblivion, which was a cracker. And HMV happened to have a 4 for £10 offer on multiple formats going, so I now have copies of the music from the Olympics closing ceremony, Tori Amos' Gold Dust, Predators and Unstoppable. They're not the greatest of media but they were still pretty good.

And it got me out of the house for a while - never a bad thing :-) I'll be back there next week for another peek at laptops but also to pick up a few things :

Iron Man 3 - yes !
Goldfrapp - Tales of Us (looking forward to more awesome)
Arctic Monkeys - AM (maybe - good but not full price good)
Doctor Who series 7 soundtrack

And there I go singing along to the Star Trek music again. It'll be Michelle Shocked not too long after it finishes.

PS I may go to PC Specialist and get one of these (link). Shiny ! And with a superduper HD screen too. The spec I'd want is £573 though, still pricey.