Laptop
Well, a couple of days ago I was poking around on Dell’s website to see what laptops they had. They have their own financial services thing, so I decided to see if I’d be approved. According to their instant online approval thing, I was - so I went ahead and configured a laptop for myself :)
Dell Inspiron 1100: Intel® Celeron® Processor at 2.2GHz w/15.0" XGA Display Memory: 512MB 266MHz 2 DIMMS PC2100 SDRAM Hard Drives: 30GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive Floppy Drive and Additional Storage: No Floppy Drive Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home - English (I’ll be installing Windows XP Professional instead) Network Adapters: Integrated Network Card Modem: Internal 56K Modem Fixed CD/DVD Drives: 8X Max Variable DVD-ROM Drive Wireless: Dell TrueMobile™ 1300 WLAN (802.11b/g, 54Mbps) miniPCI Card Productivity Software: WordPerfect™ Productivity Pack Security Software: Dell SecurityCenter by McAfee, 90-day introductory offer Digital Music: Dell Jukebox Premium powered by MUSICMATCH Primary Battery: 94Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery Warranty: 1-Yr Return-to-Depot (RTD) Service, 24×7 Phone Hardware Tech Support, 365 days a year
I was considering saving up some money to get a Powerbook G4 at some point, but that would take a while. And would cost at least $1000 more (this laptop is about $1600, and I’ll be paying less than $60/mo). Maybe I still will someday, but not so soon. Or I could just get a desktop Apple system, if they are cheaper. I’d love to be able to play around with OS X.
Financing isn’t exactly the way I wanted to get a laptop, since it’ll cost me more in the long run. But I didn’t have a couple thousand bucks lying around. Plus, with my crappy credit, this will probably help somehow. Making regular student loan and laptop payments should make it look better. I fucked up in the past with some credit cards, and regret it. The limits weren’t high, but the damage is done. Recovering from bad credit choices sucks.
Now I get to play the Has My Laptop Shipped Yet? game! (Thanks to a local friend for that link)