Technology Day

After work, I stopped by the Camera shop to hand in my precious Lumix. It's had zoom problems and vignetting for some time now but with a new job, I can justify getting it fixed. I'm off to Sheffield on Friday (where I prefer to take my Canon) so it made sense to take it to be repaired now.

I arrived home to find a box containing a lovely little solid state hard drive. My laptop had been having a lot of issues lately, crashing when I try and do anything at all taxing and generally being a pain. I decided to do a clean install of windows to check if it was a software issue. This seemed to make things worse and after a chat (and running some programs) with some computer knowledgeable people it was decided my hard drive was dying and fast. With the options of buying a new laptop for the best part of a grand or getting a smaller hard drive for not more than £60, I went with the second option. The Boy persuaded me a SSD was the way forward. It's lower capacity than my old one but that will ensure I regularly tidy up and back up my files.

Within 15 minutes the drive was in, another 10 and I'd reached the activation page for Windows. "Product Key Not Valid" - the same product key I'd done several reinstalls with the day before. An hour on the phone to someone far away and my laptop is now working again.

There's no software on it yet so here is an unedited photo of the insides of my laptop

Samhuinn tomorrow and then down to Sheffield to fulfill my Auntie duties.