It's Dead, Jim

My laptop, that is. It was an older Compaq Armada that I got quite a bit of use out of. Unfortunately, the power supply has gone to that bitbucket in the sky (and scorched leads onto the motherboard in the process). Thus, at the moment, I'm waiting for my new/old Thinkpad to get here.

This illustrates one of the problems with "legacy devices." I'll be running on Win98, instead of a "more modern" OS, for three reasons. Win98 takes less memory and has a much smaller footprint, making it a much better choice for a notebook with a potentially dodgy battery (and living in flyover country). It also has built-in parallel and serial ports. Most importantly, Win98 is interoperable with other hardware that I have, like the flatbed large-platen scanner with the sheet-feeder attachment. Unfortunately, the manufacturer of that scanner decided not to offer XP drivers.

So, while I'm parked in front of the TV watching a DVD tonight—probably Blackadder or Dr Strangelove—I'll be busily installing software. Perhaps, by the end of the weekend, I'll even have time for another blawg entry.