My.Ex.Is.Dead

Now that my hubby (notebook) is ok, my ex (Presario 1700) has decided to die. According to my parents (the proud inheritors of the unit), it has been exhibiting intermittent failures for the past week. Upon inspection, it can no longer boot pass the Compaq logo screen and sometimes just freezes with a blank screen. Once a while, dad could get it to boot into Windows but it freezes up after a few minutes of usage.

The result of my ex's passing has caused my mom to scream like a little girl and she went on stomping on the floor, sending me smses, turning up in my room (like Outlook reminders) demanding something to be done immediately! Dad on the other hand is behaving like a little boy telling me "I want a PC! I want a PC! I want a PC!" whenever I come home from work.

Since the unit is quite old (5 years+, Pentium III 750MHz) and I suspect it could be a motherboard problem as well, it won't be wise to send it for repairs. It would be much better to get a new one instead. Knowing that I'm broke due to my hubby's hospital bill, my parents are willing to fork out the money to buy their own PC. All I need to do is to make the purchase for them online!!!

It didn't occur to me that mom really knows her stuff. "I want Dell", she said.
"I want a LCD panel like those banks; must be a big one because I cannot read tiny characters", she continued.

So I went to Dell's web-site and found the following:

Dell Dimension 5150
- Intel(R) Pentium(R) D 820 with Dual Core Processing (2.8GHz, 1X2MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB)
- 80GB SATA 3.0Gb/s with Native Command Queuing
- Free RM 200 cash redemption
- Free Upgrade from 512MB to 1GB RAM
- Free Upgrade from 15" to 17" LCD

But it comes with an integrated graphics card. So, I told them to upgrade it to 128MB PCIe(TM) x16 ATI Radeon(TM) X300SE HyperMemory(TM) w/TV-Out, VGA and DVI.

"Got 20-inch wide-screen LCD or not?", mom asked.
"No! Ma, 17-inch, no wide screen.", I replied.

Looking at the specifications, I did felt for a moment that I could have bought a new PC instead of repairing my notebook. But then, the joy of using my hubby to do kick @$$ coding is priceless!

So, I ordered the PC for them and they are now anxiously waiting for the arrival of their new toy.