laptop...

hi guys! i was originally going to save this for my next empties post, but i recently posted one and the next one won't be until the end of december or early january. so yeah. ~Lindsay-chan ^.~

so on sunday, my laptop went kaput. it was a few weeks shy of 5 years old and it happened so fast. i was just playing on it, watching a t-drama and all of the sudden, there's a flash almost like a spark on the lower left side of my screen, near where my power supply plugs in. turns out the circuit breaker in my power brick got tripped and temporarily shut off. then while i'm fiddling around trying to figure out what the hell even happened, my laptop just shuts off. so it appears that the jack for my power supply (the female side in the computer) shorted out and somehow killed my battery in the process. >.> 

i was without laptop for less than 24 hours, but with a lot of research we were lucky to find one within reason at bestbuy. it's a 15.6in with an intel core i3 processor, 4gb ram, 500gb hard drive, touch screen, and windows 8.1---which by the way has been an absolute nightmare to learn how to use. this is sooo different from windows 7 annnnd they got rid of a bunch of programs that i used regularly so it's been hard trying to figure out new alternatives.. there is NO paint, NO ms office picture manager...i've been resorting to this new photo slideshow program thingy and paint.net exclusively. the calculator of all things is not a tiny window anymore..it freaking takes up the ENTIRE screen. who the hell needs a giant-ass calculator?! i mean, yeah touch screen, whatever, but there should be an option for me to make it small again. but there isn't...wtf. ....... [end windows 8.1 rant. for now.]
[update: i lied, apparently you can split-screen the calculator and resize it left or right, but that's about as small as you can get it. also, it doesn't keep the "small" setting if you close it and reopen it. wtf.]
[update, update: there is paint on here..i just couldn't find it at first..........]

also, i decided that i'm not installing all the software that i need for my classes onto this laptop because this is the last semester that i actually need them. and i don't want to deal with renewing all my licenses for each of them. school only lets us have one license and if you're in my situation and need to install it elsewhere, you have to like contact microsoft and have them reset the key or something and it's too much of a hassle. besides, the lab in the business school has all the software and it's pretty much always available in the evenings if i ever need to use it. the programs are ms office products: visual studio, visio, and project.

it's also a really weird change from the 14in to 15.6in. i'm not used to the key placement and there's a number pad now; so it's super throwing me off. the function keys that i use ALL THE TIME, like delete, printscreen, pageup, pagedown, home and end are all in totally new places... >.< we also bought an enclosure to make my old laptop's hard drive into an external. i will say that if you were to buy this enclosure, it's aluminum and it gets pretty hot if you're using it for a while.

ps.

• i'm planning on eventually upgrading this guy to 8gb of ram because 4gb with this os is not workin for me. also it's weird, there's only one card slot for ram in this laptop...my other one had 2 slots.
• sadface. i don't have a prettyful laptop cover anymore. and it was like an extra $80! (..when dell's website still let you custom build computers) TT_TT's and 晚上's!!!!!!!!!! also, TT_TT's and 晚上's that i ran out of domo stickers. the person i got them from on ebay no longer exists and all other domo decals on there are not this cut. annnd this new laptop is textured, so i don't think it'd last as well on this one anyway...