Over Thanksgiving break, I worked (as some of you might know) at a local computer store. It just so happened that I have been thinking about looking for a new laptop to replace my aging (and rather crappy) Mercer model, and one of the other technicians mentioned that he had a laptop he’d be willing to sell cheaply.

With a little wrangling, I managed to get my hands on a three year old Toshiba P35 with a Pentium 538 (3.2 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 1 MB L2, Hyperthreading), 80 GB hard drive, 512 MB ram for $150. The computer is quite a bit faster than my other laptop (Pentium M 1.3 GHz), but the only drawback is its’ size – the new one sports a hefty 17″ screen and weighs in around 10 lbs. Aside from that, the computer is in good working order aside from a damaged video cable that causes the display to occasionally look a bit wacky. However, I believe with the purchase of a $50 cable $25 cable (ordered from eBay) and a little TLC, I’ll be the owner of a cheap, fast, fully functioning laptop, and that’s pretty cool in my book!

It’s nice to have a battery that lasts more than three minutes.