Sage

My Dell laptop had seen more than its fair share viruses, worms, malwares, and careless physical handling. Four years ago my father bought me this INSPIRON B130 model which was my most reliable tool for school. Every time I look at its faded casing, I remember all those nursing care plans and other hospital duty requirements, countless papers, articles I've written and edited for the magazine,more than 500 posts in my blog, three manuscripts, layouts, spot maps, photographs perfected, a hundred movies and a thousand mp3s. I think at some point, it contained the most pertinent files and information- practically my life, in its humble 60 Gig hard drive. It is a "budget laptop" with an all-plastic casing, but its speaks volumes when it comes to sturdiness.

I've taken it to the beach- listening to music while on a bamboo raft, I've spilled Pepsi on its keyboard, the screen is practically encased in a layer of dust, and it had endured being bumped a number of times while on travel- and at one point I used my backpack as a pillow, forgetting the laptop inside. Through time, I've had to replace its cord twice, as well as its battery. I've seen what other laptops can do with their fancy Vista, awesome graphics, and sleek appearance, but this is the laptop for me.

I consider its best quality- the integration of Norton Ghost into its hard drive in factory- to be the thing that saved it from becoming junk all these years. I once had a Toshiba- my first purchase back in 2002, which was rendered useless after it crashed. With my Dell, so many viruses and malwares had caused it to shut down- and with it precious files gone, but push of a few keys activates the Recovery Setup, and no matter how corrupt the files or the drive had been, Norton Ghost is always able to restore the laptop the very same settings as I had before the problem started.

To this day, I have never had a technician repair it. Although it sucks sometimes that some new files and programs which were installed after a specific recovery point gets lost- at least the restoration to its functioning level is guaranteed. As I have begun to back up all the important stuff in a 180GB Maxtor, this becomes less of a problem.

I'm just so amazed at its resilience. Anything that endures the wear and tear of something I constantly use deserves the mention, thought sadly I think they've long stoppped making my Dell laptop model- we found that out after trying to buy new batteries. Four years and counting- I promised I'd take better care of you. Thanks to my old man :-)