My Jonesing, as William Teach so aptly described it in a comment in one of my last two posts before Mr. Inspiron passed away, has come to an end — I just received my new Dell XPS-M 1330 (a couple of hours ago, actually, but there’s all that set-up stuff you have to do, in which I’m still involved).

The reason for my relative silence these last couple of weeks is, simply put, that I can’t stand Internet cafes and library computers. I’m spoiled that way — ever since I first started blogging I’ve always done so from home or from hotel rooms, with my own choice of atmosphere (music, silence, whatever) — also, being a smoker, I prefer that option as well when I write posts or visit and comment at other blogs, something you can’t do at libraries or Internet cafes. They’re also distractive.

I seem to form these strange attachments to my computers: I don’t like other people using them, and I don’t like to use other peoples’ computers. I don’t know if this is merely a personal eccentricity or whether a lot of other folks are the same way, but that’s me.

The configuration of places to plug in cables, etc differs greatly from that of my Dell Inspiron, where all were located in the back. On this notebook they’re on the sides; The DVD/CD ROM drive is bay-style, you slide the discs in through a slot, and there is a touch pad above the keyboard that allows you to play, pause, control volume, eject and so forth without having to maximize and use the controls on the media site to do everything.

I haven’t had much chance to explore yet, so I have no idea whether or not there will be any difference on my part where the Windows Vista operating platform is concerned.

I’ve owned three computers in my life, one desktop, my Inspiron and now my second notebook, and this one is by far the fastest — according to the folks at Dell, it’s their best model currently in production. I have 2 gigs of memory, so I don’t foresee any problems there, and once the carrier I ordered arrives, I’ll be able to use my old hard drive as an external and put a lot of stuff from the late Mr. Inspiron’s lifetime into the new computer.

I have a few more set-up related items to deal with and a veritable 18 wheeler load of emails to deal with, after which Ah’ll be bock!