Bit of Ivory

I was supposed to have a meeting today with my new boss and the guy who wrote the dissertation I’m working with, but– the boss forgot about it. So I drove all the way to Provo for next to nothing. I did get a couple of things done, though: I went to the library and got my mom some more Nero Wolfe books to read, and I stopped in at the bookstore and looked at both my books for the next school year and educationally-priced computers. The books are luckily already taken care of– I was just confirming that the list I got off the internet was the same as the books available in the bookstore. They’re all novels and such, so I ordered them off Amazon. Cost me $40, all told. I could have spent $2.50 more and bought another version of Persuasion, but I think 4 is enough.

As far as the computers, they’ve got a deal with Dell, which I’ve already been looking at. On closer inspection of my case, dad has decided it might not work (it’s an HP Pavilion 8525, and is short and wide) because the modern motherboards and stuff need more vertical space than horizontal. So that ups the price a bit for a home-built model. Then he decided that the motherboard he’d found on NewEgg didn’t get good enough reviews, and so he looked at another one which was both more expensive and didn’t have an integrated video card, which means I’d have to buy one of those too. And the price kept going up and up– and I decided to look at just buying either a pre-built or a custom tower from a reputable company. Since I categorically refuse to shop at Best Buy, especially for a computer that might in some future day need servicing, I’ve been looking at CompUSA and Circuit City. They have a few options, mostly eMachines and HPs. Now, since Harry is an HP (one of the reasons he’s named Harry. :P) and I haven’t had much trouble with him at all, I’d be willing to get another one. On the other hand, I’ve never had an eMachine and don’t know what kind of ratings they get. And they all looking to be about the same price as a Dell.

I’ve so far been quite satisfied with Ginevra– the services I’ve needed have been mostly my own fault (I broke the enter key on the keyboard, and I simply overused my adapter) rather than inherent defects in the machines, and the service itself has been fine. I got my new keyboard the day after I requested it, and my laptop adapter came this morning (yay!). It’s all been covered under warranty. If I’m going to go with a pre-built computer, I’d rather go with Dell, I think, because I trust them to provide a quality product and a reasonable level of service.

So at the moment I’m looking at the Dell E510. Rather than getting a monitor (since I already have a flat panel), I’ll upgrade the hard drive to 160GB (that’s 8 times larger than Harry’s current disk!), and with the BYU discount and the free shipping and all, it’ll cost me about $650. And that’ll include the OS and WordPerfect (not the whole office, but I can install my copy that came with Ginevra on both machines and stay within the license). I need to order today if I want to get the free upgrade to 512MB of memory, though. And I’ll need to get a new printer, I think, because mine is nearly 8 years old and uses an LPT port, and I don’t think the Dell has one. But they’ve got some good back-to-school deals at the Bookstore for those– a new HP Photosmart one is only $69, for instance. Still it looks like this is the best deal: it has everything I want, but nothing I don’t really need.

Now I get to figure out how to spend the rest of my day. I think I’ll do thesis research for a bit, and then do some knitting, and maybe attempt to rearrange all the books on my bookshelf into some semblance of order.