IT'S FINALLY OVER!!!

If you somehow missed the drama that is our computer situation, here's a couple links to catch you up:

My Kingdom for a Trouble-Free Computer (April 3)
Blargh... (May 6)

Even if you don't feel like clicking the links, the dates alone will tell you that this has been going on for A WHILE (and my laptop had already been having issues for several weeks when I first wrote about it). So basically, I had an intermittent laptop through March and April... and then no laptop at all through May and June, as we finally had Staples send it away to a repair depot just after my May 6th post. These guys, we were assured, would fix the issue we were having, along with anything else they found wrong with it, and we'd essentially be getting it back in new condition, probably in a couple of weeks.

Obviously, that didn't happen.

But although it was frustrating and inconvenient not to have my own computer, between my smart phone for little things and Pat's desktop for big things, I got by. There were file incompatibility issues (the desktop used Office 2003, the laptop had used Office 2009) and just the general awkwardness of using a computer that wasn't my own, but it wasn't too bad... aside, of course, from the fact that we hadn't planned on this arrangement lasting more than a few weeks. We'd paid good money, we'd expected results, and as weeks turned into months, the frustration (if not the inconvenience) continued to grow.

AND THEN, we came back after the Fourth of July weekend to discover that the desktop monitor was dead for some reason. Thankfully it was only the monitor and not the computer itself, so we were able to hook up to our TV and use that for a monitor... only we don't have one of those nice new flat-screens, it's an old TV, and everything looks incredibly fuzzy and distorted, no matter what resolution we pick. I mean, it was nice to be able to get all our data off the computer, and to use it if there was something we absolutely couldn't use our phones for (I was doing a little bit of blurry blogging these last couple weeks), but for the most part we were computer-less.

MEANWHILE, either the computer depot that Staples uses is full of morons, or they had a string of incredibly bad luck. I'm not even going to recount all of the updates we got over the past couple months (and getting those updates was like pulling teeth). Suffice it to say that they tried one thing after another after another, went through faulty parts and needed to replace them multiple times... and in the end, they finally gave up and sent the laptop back to the store MORE BROKEN THAN IT WAS WHEN WE SENT IT TO THEM!!!

The good news in all of this is that Staples gave us a full refund, plus a compensatory coupon, and so last night we bought a brand new laptop -- my first one since 2001 (!!!) and a nice upgrade from the old one -- for about $60 more than what we would have paid for the repairs. Obviously it would have been better to get this resolved months ago, but I'm just glad it's finally over.