Computer Woes

I woke up yesterday to find that my laptop; the one with all of my photoshop stuff on, has given up the ghost - again. It's never really been anything but hassle since I bought it three and a half years ago. Less than a year after I got it it had to have a new motherboard, at which point I found out that the particular batch it came from should have been recalled because of a known fault in the circuitry. Some obviously got through the net though and were sold, so Hewett Packard decided to extend their basic guarantee by a year, which was all very well, but I'd already taken out an extended warranty - just as well I did however, because it's now had four new motherboards and two serviceboards replaced...or so they say. All I know is it comes back to me - works for approximately a month or so, then ends up back in the repair shop for weeks on end, which is hugely frustrating to say the least. I'm lucky I suppose in that I have a back-up computer, which is what I'm writing this from - but it doesn't have any of my photoshop software on it, neither does it have a graphics card anywhere near as good as the one on my other laptop.

I was told when I bought the extended guarantee, that they'd either repair or, if it was beyond redemption, replace a broken or faulty computer without question. With this in mind I've suggested on the last two occasions I've taken it back for repair that it would perhaps have been cheaper for them to have replaced it, but I'm continually fobbed off with some excuse not to do that and made to feel that I'm somehow swinging the lead in order to get a brand spanking new computer which isn't the case at all, I just want a computer of the same quality that actually works for more than a month at a time....surely that's not completely unreasonable of me?

Changing the subject completely before I end up crying with frustration....I discovered yesterday that someone has uploaded 'Love, Pain and the Whole Damn Thing' onto YouTube - not just a snippet, but the entire film. Yipee!


The one and only time I saw it previously was waaaay back in the late 1970's - it was on the TV one afternoon when I was off school sick and it had such a profound effect on me, I've looked out for it ever since but have had no luck in finding it. Watching it again yesterday it of course now appears very dated in part and maybe a little too simplistic for modern tastes, but it's a very tender film, quite understated yet wonderfully bittersweet with some lovely comedic touches interspersed to lighten it up a little. I don't quite know why it's stuck in my head all these years - I suppose it initially appealed to my sense of romance and wanderlust, and still does to a degree, but I can honestly say it was a real treat to have been able to see it again after all these years - one of life's simple pleasures I guess.