Impressions - My Second Hand Lap Top

Let me talk to you about my back up computer. I use a second hand lap top that was bought from an I.T guy who had claimed to own the machine for less than a year. The machine itself is an Acer Travel mate 3210 and came with a T.V input device that lets you watch some very grainy television. I wasn’t too keen on this add-on as I had read that the Arial feed is effected by the computers own radiation and so you are guaranteed a blurry and troublesome picture, but the device was already on the table and I went for it.

This was the first time that I had used a second hand machine. The reason for this was not some inherent snobbery but because all my previous computers were left in a sad state of affairs; fused motherboards, corrupted programs and all its wires spilling out of the case. Hence my reluctance to buy and use a machine that some other sod has had his incompetent way with! But needs must, as the saying goes and I am now the proud owner of a silver colour laptop.

Initially I was not a fan of the laptop and put them on par with digital watches and leather file fax thingies. Probably because I remember the early days of laptop machines when they broke easily and that they are still quite pricy for what you get. There was also the wee news story of the batteries bursting into flames which is actually more dramatic than their usual behavior which sees them loosing their charge capacity (memory) to only a few minutes. But my mind was changed by the fact that many library reading rooms around Edinburgh are becoming more crowed, especially around term time, but I noticed the tables set aside for laptops were often empty! So I use a laptop as an artifice so I can avoid sitting next to amateur genealogists, hung over students and strange smelling scholars. There is always a solution to every irritation if you have the patience and the resources to face them off!

Upon receipt of the computer, I noticed that the guy had wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Windows. That was expected and all above board although he had not included the disk for the DVD player and the one he had installed was only a demo version. The other surprising thing was half a dozen pictures of pneumatically enhanced bathing beauties on a non-descript beach. These pictures were located in a file marked "screensaver" in the "My Pictures" directory. From the look of it, they formed part of a screensaver program although a few pictures were degraded. Fortunately they were not properly installed as they would have appeared while I was making notes (still by hand) in the library. God knows, the librarians do not need any excuse to lower their estimation of me already!

The question is why they were there at all? There were no games, no humorous pictures, nothing else installed. Everything was back to factory specs. The machine had been reformatted so any previous data would be destroyed. If this was a comic extra, then why not properly install it and if this was a deliberate act on his part – what does it say to his character or his opinion of me. Do I look like the sort of man who needs a bit of free porn with all his purchases? On the other hand, when he sells his furniture does he include a topless calendar? A strange situation, I think.

Before I end, I would like to point out that there are no pornographic (soft, hard or exceptionally questionable) on my computer. I download a few tunes and play games, but the largest percentage of work done on my machines is research based. I’m the sort of guy who takes a perverse glee in the fact that I edit Wikipedia entries and have my own blog site. Sad isn’t it?