Rain is my laptop and she's getting older and wonky. I bought her in 2006 and in the first month had lots of issues with her and Azerty (where I bought her: don't ever do that!) and a faulty mother board. After that was finally fixed she worked great. However, now, nearly 6 years later, the optical drive no longer works (won't eject/open until you've tried at least 16 times via both hardware and software) and she's showing 'blue screens of death' more and more often. Something inside makes nasty screeching sounds every once in a while too.

Yesterday she had a very spectacular crash. We're not sure if it was really something in the computer itself or two Trojan horses that were detected this morning by my free AVG version. It was probably the virus that wiped clean my desktop, quick launch bar and start menu though. Fortunately Matthijs, although being a Linux user, knew how to fix that and I have most of my settings back now. The virus had set all desktop/menu related files to hidden and put some stuff in the registers. I seriously hate people that make viruses and think they should all horribly die.

Still, virus or no it is probably time for a new computer. Matthijs is being a darling looking through all kinds of sites and offers to find a good one. I do not have enough knowledge, and don't care enough, to know what to look for. All I know is that I'm not going to spend over 1500 EUR to get a new laptop and that I want to be able to play Warcraft/Starcraft (the old ones) besides work. That should be simple enough....

This year seems to be one of goodbye's....