Warbly day thinking about tablets
Good morning ... this is me. We are at work now and I'm with the group. Everyone is talking quietly or working in their notebooks or puzzles. I think this writing is part of us doing our thing like they are doing theirs. I look up every 15 seconds to make sure everyone is doing what they are supposed to. People seem pretty calm this morning.We've been doing just a little this morning. We had written a couple of paragraphs from home, but didn't get a chance to post ... I just hadn't gotten far enough along. We're we left off last night was that we had gotten pretty obsessed with trying to find a computer. We are spending the money we haven't gotten from our taxes yet. We'd looked at net books, and then we looked at tablets and decided we really wanted something better like a tablet.
We had thought we were going with a Dell, but we had trouble with the financing. It was considered a business computer, so I couldn't use my credit even though we have a couple thousand dollars of credit. That was frustrating because I'd spent so much time checking out the machine. But, that opened up another possibility. There was a machine called the Lenovo X200 tablet which was getting a much better review. It was the same cost range.
So, I did everything I needed to get that in order. I didn't know if I'd get financing, but they said it was only a 2 question form, so I thought there was a chance. I was at least hopeful. But, when I had picked out all the options and pressed enter to get to their payment screen the screen didn't open up. It was very frustrating ... I tried having without having an account and I tried with having an account and the result was the same. I figured that it then either that the program was faulty, or that they might have had it turned off because we weren't in business hours.
Either way it was frustrating ... I will have to decide now today if I'm going to try it again. Most likely I will, but I'm still not sure if I will get financing so I don't want to build up too much excitement. The computer cost $3,000 with all the options I wanted on it. They really - they being all computer systems really add on the extra money. There were a lot of things that we felt were necessary. The only thing we weren't sure of was the program for Microsoft Office '07. We're hoping that we could use the disk we've got. I'm also not sure about the part of which operating system ... we chose an option that had Vista and XP.
Hmm, we just got a call from Wells Fargo ... I guess we were farther behind then we had thought. I'm going to need making a $500 payment today ... That's going to sting. I will still have to make a payment in February. I'm not sure if I'll be able to cover for that. There's a lot of other stuff to pay for too. I'm going to need checking in with my checking account when I get back to the office. I need to make sure things are covered ... I had paid so much out the first week of January; I really thought I was better caught up. Shoot. $500 could be a deal breaker. It also makes me wonder if I'm up to date with the other school loan.
Drat ... I hate when reality gets involved with my dreams especially considering my spending habits. Ok, we'll have to be tough.
We want the computer before we go out fishing with our fishing buddy. We're going to want a laptop that we can use whenever and not be in competition with Rich wanting to be on the computer. I love the idea of a tablet because it would allow me not to be carrying around the clipboard at work. I'm always taking notes. It is really cool to do it on the computer. It's also pretty light weight. It’s less than 4 pounds. Plus, I like it because it's an evolution for me.
Again though, we have to be thoughtful of maybe not being able to get financed. If my school loans are in question than I have to worry about what my credit is looking like. I can deal, right?
Good afternoon. It’s me again. It’s still during the work day, but there is less than an hour left and we’ve been off-focus all day. Yeah you can about guess where and with what. But, we’ve made a choice and it’s looking pretty good. We brought the price down to under $2400, which should be pretty close to our tax refund. We didn’t order any computer today, but we checked things out pretty thoroughly.
We had looked at the X200 tablet, but then we didn’t get that financing. We tried not to be too down about that and instead did quite a bit of research on a Dell XPS 1500 something.
Hmm, there was a little break here. We checked our email and then set up the media so we could read, listen and watch the hearing for Blagojevich’s impeachment trial. And, now Sr. Florine is back here. She’s asked several questions so far. It’s not a problem, but it’s noticeable. Sometimes I feel like her secretary. I’ve got to stop this because I do love Sr. Florine … just again feeling a bit invaded with her back here. We might go as far to say because we aren’t doing what we’re supposed to, but that doesn’t overly alarm us. I can’t say why though. I think we are sometimes just a bad person. We are pretty self-centered on our own needs over that of the clients and the center. Not directly, but essentially. If someone had a direct need I would take care of it … but in-between these times we are being pretty resistant.
Let me go back to the other … there’s no fixing of the situation I’m not getting better. Not sure if it’s something that is important to me. I seem just to want to fill my minds with things that are important to me disregarding the facts that I should give my boss my work time. I felt bad too in that she’d given me a good written review. In our minds we tend to block out things that are counter to our freer thoughts. I don’t want to feel bad and working makes me feel bad – not after we do it so much as to the starting of it. I guess then that it would be considered the transition.
Ok, Our way of looking at the X200 is that we can buy the computer for about the amount of money our taxes should be and it should cost almost $1000 less than the original price we’d gotten from the company directly. The company that we’d found was in Pennsylvania. It seems like a stable place and they only sell tablets and tablet accessories. The company is called, Allegiance Tablet PC Experts. I liked that after we called them to talk the salesman was a nice older man and that they had different departments which included technical assistance. The gentleman – Al – I got a hold of did a pretty good job of answering my direct questions as well as the indirect questions where we were still trying to assure ourselves that we were looking at the right computer and purchase point.
Earlier I had been looking at the computer at Dell, and we’d gotten up to the closing screens where you just have to push the “buy” button. The computer we were looking at was $1700 so still it was under the $2050 we had in the account. We were figuring that would be the only way we could get a computer. I can’t tell you right now when we are doing these sort of things why it’s so important. I feel thought that we are getting information from more parts than one. The point is though that we stopped before pushing the button. It had occurred to us as we were at Dell that we hadn’t actually looked up as much information as we should have – we were just there buying because we could.
So, we went back to the Internet and started researching the computer. We’d done pretty good – in that we were coming up with positive things, but at one point we noticed that although the reviewers were giving it a good review there was a group of about 87 people who had given it a rating of about 3.2 of 5. That seems like a real low score especially for that number of people. I figured as much as I didn’t want to because we were so close to a decision that we should really listen.
I got about 30 people down and we seemed to be getting multiple reports of the same kind of problems. I didn’t like the noises that the computer was making as to lose parts, poorly venting fans, and hot palm spots. There were plenty of other things wrong too – in general people liked the way the machine looked and the keyboard, but there were other problems that were building up in my mind … not the least of which was that it had terrible reflection outdoors. This was the primary spot I would be looking to use the computer – or in the car. Things like the battery only being average didn’t help either and people kept repeating over and over again how the computers were going into blue screens and dozens of other problems and how terrible Dell was at servicing the machines.
At one point … I just said enough. As much as we wanted to purchase the computer … it just couldn’t be justified. We figured that if we were going to spend big money, we should get something we were really happy with. Then we thought lovingly back to the X200 tablet from Lenovo. It had been really high rated yards and above the others it was being compared to. I thought maybe I should look at that some more to figure out if it just wasn’t sketchy information. We went through a couple of Google screens just reading and reading. It seemed that there were consistency’s in almost every report, but that I was learning new things as we went along. I really think I have a good idea of what this machine is about.
For now though I’m going to leave it go … our concentration isn’t strong enough to finish the conversation, Sr.’s talking again, the trials been happening, and now it’s a quarter after 4 pm. Probably best to just head out.
posted by Ann Marie @ 1/26/2009 04:15:00 PM
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