Well, my Toshiba Satellite P25 died yesterday, ending what was a hate/hate affair between us. I managed to salvage the absolute most important files, but not the less-important-but-I-sure-wish-I-had-been-able-save-them files.

This machine was a (very expensive) piece of crap virtually from the word “go”. It actually worked great for a few weeks, but soon began cutting off randomly, blue-screening frequently, and rebooting mysteriously. Towards the end there, it was taking about 15 minutes to boot up, and then may or may not lose power immediately thereafter. Perhaps it was only the hard drive - I know it died horribly while I had it out at hooked up to the new shiney lappy trying to recoved that data that I had not recently backedup (read: virtually everything absolutely non-critical).

And this here is the new shiney - a Sony Vaio VGN-AX580G. Now, I’ve had one Sony Vaio before and wasn’t happy with it, but I had to replace the laptop immediately and the PX basically has three choices: Sony Vaio, HP or Compaq. So, given those 3 choices, and the fact that you have to get the machine right away, what do you do? I figure Sony is the least crappy of the three, so I’ll give them one more chance.

Of course, the thing came with about 80 craptacular programs already installed and running; why do they do that? And what’s up with no uninstall easily located for America Online? Not only is it not in Add/Remove Programs or on the start menu, but AOL is hidden in an “Online Services” folder. Here is Jason’s law of crapware:
The value of the software to the user is inversely proportional to how difficult it is to uninstall.

At least the thing works, and I must admit nicely so far. However, the true value will start being revealed months down the road, not the first week after purchase.