In the interests of working remotely,

even if it is just elsewhere in my tiny kingdom, I have invested in an up-to-date laptop. Well, the hard drive had died in the old one, and in any case there wasn't a great deal I could do with an elderly PIII with 256 meg of memory and - most limiting - a maximum screen resolution of 800x600. The screen size drove me mad, being now thoroughly used to the big 19" LCD monitors I have on the two desktop boxes. I do like to see what I'm about. No doubt the old laptop will get fixed some time and used for hazardous duty like streaming dub to my living room or writing blog entries from remote locations such as coffee shops, something I've long thought tossy in others and am naturally keen to try for myself. Become your enemy, I always say.

Hampered somewhat by post-Christmas low stocks in the shops and a terrible urge to get something which could run Second Life at a clip, I was forced (that's my story) to push out the proverbial boat. Now I have a laptop of such brutality that it astonishes me. 2 gig of ram, half a gig of dedicated graphics memory (dedicated) on Nvidia 7600 hardware, a couple of 120 gig drives, huge wide screen and so on. Oh yes, and every burning capability there is plus HD DVD playback (!), ability to receive and record digital TV, Bluetooth and all the rest of it. It's a frightener and no mistake, so much so that my desktops look very feeble by comparison - and they are themselves pretty brutish.

Paying for it will be the real frightener. At least I got a great deal.

Armed with this new unit I aim to be able to do anything anywhere, at least as far as computing is concerned. Now all I have to do is get on with it...