Toshiba Satellite of Love: The Story of a Woman and Her Laptop

How can I best describe my Toshiba Satellite A55 laptop? You'll probably want to know right up front that it came with 37.2 GB when I bought it in October 2005. It has an Intel Celeron M processor with a speed of 1.3 GHz and 240 MB of RAM. It came with Windows XP home edition 2002 service pack 2 and a Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method battery. I'm not really a computer geek, so I'm really not sure what else you would need to know. The graphics and memory don't lend themselves to playing Final Fantasy XI but the computer is perfect for a writer with a serious myspace addiction.

There are only two things I don't like about my Satellite. First of all, the version of Office 2003 with which it came was only a trial, so naturally the trial ended the moment I returned home from a vacation and wanted to edit my trip photos right then. Secondly, the touch pad for the mouse gets a little wonky at times and the cursor freezes up or moves on its own for a moment. But this doesn't happen very often, and the computer itself never crashes.

Sure, the battery only holds a charge for two and a half hours, but the coffee shops and hotel rooms of the world come equipped with plenty o' electrical outlets. Maybe I only have 4.6 of the original GB left, but what I've lost in space (I said lost in space, tee hee) I've gained in several thousand songs, all my photos and writing since November 2005, a DVD player/cd burner and all my boyfriend's screenplays traveling with me everywhere I roam. And even though I've filled all that space, the computer still allows me to surf the internet as quickly as it did the day I brought it home.

I had always wanted a laptop since my roommates back in 1999 introduced me to the joys of portable computing. You want to email people from the kitchen? No problem. You want to hide away and watch a movie in bed? Okay. Your roommates are hiding away in bed none too quietly and you're checking email in the kitchen with earplugs in your ears? Take the computer and flee to the nearest coffee shop to work on that novel your parents are subsidizing, leaving only a ransom note that reads, "I'll get my own computer when you get a soundproofed bedroom."

Unfortunately it took me until 2005 to buy a laptop but by then the cost of this one was only $700. And this thing is a war horse! Last summer a glass of water flew out of my hand and onto the keyboard. My boyfriend took it apart and dried it with a hairdryer and the performance never flagged an iota. And last month I was moving from the couch to the desk with the screen open and the laptop flew out of my hands and landed facedown on the floor. Nothing changed about its performance other than that I am eventually going to have to replace the screen. I'm writing this article on it right now, sitting in a coffee shop. And because I'm not a geek, and can form sentimental attachments to electronics, until my Satellite is so hopelessly out of date that I can't use it at all it will keep on orbiting my world with me.