Picture from Pixabay

So we ended up emergency going out and buying a new laptop for my Mom and her SO. She called me yesterday evening that their laptop was throwing up an errors, and eventually it wouldn’t boot at all. She managed to take a photo of the error one time, and googling lead me to the conclusion that – considering the laptop was going on 14 years old – its hard drive was dying. We’d already been talking about buying a new one for a couple of years because it was so slow and probably wouldn’t even be ab, and Mom said she didn’t like to use it because of that anymore, and that she’d like to be able to watch Yle Areena video web service (it’s all jerky and stopping entirely after a bit on the old laptop) on the computer because they don’t have a smart tv yet (she wants one of those too now). But her SO wasn’t keen on a new laptop because they use it so little. But hard drive dying  solved the problem, and now they have a shiny new Acer Aspire 5 that has Windows 10 on it and is Windows 11 ready and can run Yle Areena without any problems. Their old laptop had Linux Mint on it, and Mom wants it on the new one too (Windows gets on her nerves while Linux is smooth sailing once its all setup), but it took all the time and energy we had today just to make the Windows ready for them so we happily left Linux Mint for the next time.

It was a good thing I’d already talked to them about needing a new laptop sooner rather than later, so Mom had been looking at them somewhat already and they were both mentally prepared for the idea already. I do all the installing and help a lot with the choosing when it comes to phones, televisions and computers for my Mom so I spent this afternoon installing Windows and getting it how we like it. I have to say that I love how fast the initial install is now – just only about 20-30 minutes and I can start setting all the custom programs up. What I don’t love is the need for the Microsoft account but I guess I can live with it, although my Mom hated it – luckily I remembered she has Skype so we were able to use that. The new laptop is an Acer Aspire 5 and 15”, their old one was 17,3” so it’ll take some getting used to having a smaller one. 

Now we only need to get my Mom a new phone – she dropped her Doro smartphone a few months ago and it’s never been right after that. Keeps turning off, or heating up. At first we thought we’d pick up Doro 8080 at the same time as the laptop, but then she decided that it’s too much mentally to get both a new laptop and a phone the same day, and also that she’d like to get it from the regular department store instead of a specialty store like the laptop. So we didn’t get one today, but I expect it’ll happen during August. She really into Doro, and want the fingerprint reader like I have in my Huawei, so Doro 8080 looks like it’ll be the next.

The heat wave is over for now 😀 and it rained a lot today 🙂 It’s so humid though my head didn’t like it, and it was made worse with the sudden need to go computer shopping and then getting it all in working order made my heart hurt worse because of the stress. Not sure if it’s gonna be a migraine attack, could go either way.