Yesterday
Reading
I’ve spent much time today reading once again. I’ve picked up where I left off, starting the second book in the series, Tattooed Horizon. Like the previous, it it very enjoyable and I just don’t want to stop reading!
Work
We ran a few errands today, payed a bill or two, did some shopping for the villas. I even ventured out on my own to drop off some paperwork for an incoming shipment. Later on, we met up with some people to show around a couple of our villas.
Today
FUCK
So I got up this morning like always, headed down to the kitchen, and poured my coffee. As I sat down, I opened my MacBook to find it now coming on. The keyboard lit up a bit, but the screen remained dark. Closed it and opened it, no change. Tapped a few keys, touched the trackpad, no change.
After a hard power down, it booted up, but the screen was wrong. Lines, vertical lines, alternating across the screen. Boot up was slow, appeared to stall. So not good. It’s dead. I can maybe get it to boot occasionally. But I can’t use it anymore. There’s a hardware issue, and I can’t fix it. Maybe I can take to to town and have a repair shop there look at it. I doubt there’s anything they can do that wouldn’t cost too much.
Luckily I still have my ancient Asus laptop that I was using for QuickBooks. That’s it, no more gaming on PC. This thing can’t handle it. Maybe I just need to buy a new laptop, that’s really my only option. So now I’m in the process of pricing a new laptop. There’s no way I can afford something that would truly replace the MacBook though. My AppleCare extended warranty has expired, so there’s no free repairs coming.
Options
So I’ve now spent some time looking at my options of replacing this thing. I started just by looking on Amazon and Newegg, but ended up over in /r/LaptopDeals. I think I could get a decent laptop for less than $600. It wouldn’t even compare to what I’m replacing though. I’m almost thinking of increasing my price range to get something a little bit better, but really I don’t have a lot of spare money to spend.
My top 3 picks are an Acer Aspire E 15 ($600ish), Acer Nitro 5 ($700ish), and Asus ROG Strix ($800ish). I’m fairly certain I won’t be going with the first one, even though it is the cheapest. The main difference between the last two is the processor and an extra hard drive. It would be nice to have the added space of a 1TB drive.
The other problem I have is that I can get it here for free if I can get it to my brother before they come for their Thanksgiving visit. Maybe I should just go with the cheapest one. Any of them are better than the REALLY old laptop I’m stuck using without my MacBook. This thing is at least 6 years old, and was a budget laptop when I bought it.
The Rest
After all that, there was still much of the day left. I’ve resigned myself now to just use this laptop for the time being. I’ve got my switch, so I can still do some gaming. I even back a backup (for now) in case I need it. When my brother comes down he’ll hopefully have a screwdriver with him I can use to pull apart the MacBook in the hopes there’s something simple I can do to repair it.
Beyond that, we’ve done a little work. Ran some errands, the usual. And of course I’ve continued reading the book. I’m getting close to the end, but I doubt I’ll finish it today. All of my TV is on the mac though, so I’ll only have YouTube to watch tonight.
