Well, I pulled my finger out after my earlier posts today and headed off to PCWorld to buy my Philips X53. I did have to think twice when I saw that the Toshiba with fingerprint scanner AND PCMCIA had been reduced. But the 512MB of RAM compared to the 1024 on the Philips X53 sold it to me!

I had to wait what seemed like an age before I could attract the attention of a member of staff to unlock the demo for me. He tried to (and failed dismally!) before we agreed a reboot was required. He left me playing with it for a while. I hasten to add I wasn’t hassled once (which totally surprised me, and aggravated me at the same time). When I finally attracted his attention I was informed a queue was in place and he’d get someone to me ASAP.

He was as good as his word, but this was some 40 minutes later – by which time the security guard had walked past me three times and must of thought I was on the fiddle. Many other people (who may or may not have been in the queue) were loitering around the store – must be every security guards nightmare!

Anyway I parted with my cash and brought the shiny new lappy home. I left it charging for a while before dinner and only sat down to play with it around 8-8.30.

The battery went only 10 minutes ago!!! I’m shocked, amazed and thrilled all at once! It’s now on the kitchen table charging in “Battery Calibration mode”, lord knows what it does – but it’s got the fan on full and BIOS seems to be playing with the battery. All in all a nice toy!

Already installed:

• Firefox (Wouldn’t be without it)
• Thunderbird (Never used it before!)
• Putty (Couldn’t live without it)
• AVG Free (Very good free anti-virus)

I’m sure more will come but at least that’s the basics on there!