It’s a better day today though. I get to beat on someone else’s laptop. I always enjoy doing this especially when I get blanket permission from the victim owner to do whatever to takes to make it all better. In this case the laptop in question is a 5 year old Dell with Windows XP installed that was bought from a local hardware store.

A hardware store?

Yes, it belongs to an average user who bought it from a hardware store that has a guy who works out of some back room selling Dell computers (sales and service type of thing I guess). The owner does have the knowledge to defrag the drive occasionally but trusted the guy she bought it from for everything else. Including the belief that the McAfee anti-virus suite was good forever and ever which, of course, went away 6 months after it was purchased.

Amazingly enough it still (mostly) functions.

Now let’s see, hammer, chisel, screwdrivers, 3 types of saws, jewelers files, drill…yup, I think I’m ready. Hope this thing is insured.