About 2 weeks ago J called me because the laptop had crashed. She uses it for Firefox, IE7 (for the BBC iplayer) and that’s about it. Nothing major, nothing that can even remotely stress it. She said she was checking the village out in Google Earth and it crashed. She didn’t know to hold the power button down to switch it off so I did that and it rebooted without a problem it seemed. The end of last week J is using the laptop - she uses it daily. She cannot get to the places she wants to so it brings them closer - and again opens Google Earth to check something. And in the middle of that it crashes again. Only this time it’s terminal. Nothing can bring it back. It switches on, the HDD light flickers once and then nothing. The HP people - it’s a HP dv2104eu - a very nice little laptop indeed - went through some basic ‘hold the keys when you start up’ type stuff and they declared that the graphics part of the computer is dead.
So Google Earth killed my laptop.
There is no guarantee now - it’s 4 months out - so we are looking for a new one later this week. An eeepc is too small - that’s what she is using right now for email and her website - and the others you buy have Vista on. So my plan is we buy a machine, probably in the £300-400 range, and when we get it home I ‘reinstall’ XP onto it. I’d go with Linux if I could find somewhere local that offered them and there was saving involved but I can’t. XP does not seem to be an option though I will be asking when we go to check some machines but I have a real copy anyway. Annoying all the same.
And even if Google Earth was not guilty (but it is) J will probably not use it on a laptop again. It’s the association thing. She is sure that Google Earth killed her laptop.
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