Conclusion to the BSOD

You may recall on Christmas Day that my old laptop crashed and I got the accursed Blue Screen of Death. I ordered a new Dell Inspiron 15 laptop, an picture of which you can see to the left. It arrived on Tuesday, but I didn't have a chance to really set it up until today (due in part to a migraine last night). Imagine my dismay when the Internet connection wouldn't work, and after doing some research discovering there may be incompatibility between Windows 7 and my ISP. (And here I thought compatibility was only something matchmakers had to deal with.) I was dreading having to call TimeWarner for help, but after 1 hour of technical assistance, we got Internet back, and I must applaud Mina and Apple (yes, like the fruit), two women who did a great job talking me through everything.

My initial impressions of the Inspiron 15 is that it is very sleek. You can pick a variety of different colors and designs, but that costs extra, so I went with basic black. It has a beautiful glossy finish that, curiously, reminds me of the lacquered Yamaha baby grand piano I had when I was a teenager. (This was the same piano that, after being set up in our living room, immediately shocked my mother into realizing she had to redecorate the entire house to go with the piano. Practically overnight we went from traditional to 1980s ultra-modern: black-lacquered furniture, white sectional sofa, mauve carpeting, and abstract paintings.) The laptop is a bit heavier than my previous Inspiron, but the monitor is much larger for high-definition viewing, and the screen resolution is incredible. So far Windows 7 is interesting to work with, but fortunately it's not that different from Windows XP in how files are arranged, so that has been an easy transition. The best news, though, is that I lost none of the files on my old computer. Thanks to a handy-dandy linking system, I was able to copy all my music, digital images, and documents onto the new laptop in one easy sweep.

So what this means is that bklynbiblio is back online from the home front overlooking the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. If you're reading this post on the actual site itself (http://bklynbiblio.blogspot.com/) you'll notice also I've modified the look a bit for the new year.