I bought two pieces of computer hardware on a recent Saturday. Well, really three…

The last was the most impressive item, although the first wasn’t too unimpressive, either. I finally made my decision and purchased another notebook (that was the last purchase of the day — number 3).

Many readers will remember that my main computer is my notebook computer. My Dell Inspiron 8600 has served me pretty well for over four years, though. Since I’m buying a "desktop replacement" notebook, I have to use it a while to get my money’s worth out of the computer.

The most significant factor in my I8600 was the LCD screen. Many notebooks were available with resolutions of 1024×768. However, I was already used to a high resolution of 1400×1050 and used to the amount of information (in multiple windows) that I could have on the screen at one time. That one feature is probably the major reason my second notebook was a Dell as was my first.

Upgrading the memory was a great way to get better performance from the notebook. My first upgrade was to increase from the original 256 megabytes to 384 megabytes (256+128). This made Windows XP run much more quickly. Of course, as memory becomes cheaper and computers get more powerful, Windows, antivirus programs, and other programs took more and more memory and more…

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