I have held onto my old laptop for way too long. It was a good machine for my purposes, but it started locking up randomly and downloads reminded me of the old days on dial up.

I then got a new one that became the new workhorse. I managed to save the “boombox” sticker off of the lid and added it to the new laptop. I added a few more to it along the way.

When that laptop began to suffer, particularly when I was in the thick of weekly sports photo editing and fought with still more random shut downs and lock ups, making editing a strenuous task at best, I started shopping again. I decide to try an all-in-one, which served it’s purpose, but couldn’t be festooned with the “boombox” sticker. The all-in-one was fast and editing pictures was a dream come true. It was awesome. BUT… ever so slowly it too fell apart. The internet slowed, then the wi-fi adapter just died. I bought an external antenna, but that was ill suited for my purposes. It was time to do yet another laptop.

The new laptop is fast and small and able to hook to my work rig so I am able to use 3 screens! It’s a joy to use and I immediately thought of the boombox sticker. YES! To my dismay it was actually too large to fit on the new Dell.

Wah wah wahhhh…

I put it out of my mind for a while, but it occurred to me that perhaps I could cut it down. I measured it and if I were to slice off part of the top it would fit. The upper part is just the handle and I figured why not, let’s give it a try. Sticker surgery.

I sliced off the upper black handle and cut the corners round a bit and spent a mind splintering amount of time trying to get it on there JUST right. Finally, it was on. What once was a sticker that was way too small for my giant old school laptop, just barely fit. See the size comparison below.

Normally I would cry about how small the laptop is, but with 3 screens… it’s wicked cool.

On the new laptop I also went back to an oldie but a goodie. WINAMP.

I remember how amazed I was when I came across Winamp for the first time. That was the first time I ran visualizations with my music and it was mind blowing. I would load up hours of music, and the cross fade plugin and start the visualizations and let it run and run. It was trippy. I remember spending hours scouring for cool visualizations to add. It’s what I did back then, and play Doom.

At any rate. When I saw the install screen and the skin options it also blew me back over the years.

This was another thing that I spent ridiculous amounts of time getting. I even got a program that you could use to make your own skins. When my friend Alan’s daughter was born he sent me a picture and I made a skin with it. I just searched my files and I still have it! Created 7/5/2002. How about this Alan. From baby to college in the blink of an eye!

This time around I chose the classic skin, the original. I loved all the buttons and sliders. Sigh.

Hello to you DJ Mike Llama. Welcome back to my desktop.

Last but not least in the changing of the guard we have my MP3 player. I have always used my IPod for listening to music when I’m mowing or cutting vinyl or out and about in the world. It still uses old school headphones and has been a valiant and constant friend.

30 Whole Gig. What’s not to love, right?

Well, it is having a hard time holding much of a charge for any length of time, and if you bend the headphone plug at all it shuts down and it takes like a minute and a half to reset and restart. Sigh. Also, moving music on and off of this has always been a pain. I don’t use I-Tunes and consequently the music on this is stuck in the late 80’s early 90’s. There is stuff on here that I will never listen to, but I have never had enough gumption to clear it and start fresh.

So… I invested a whole $45 bucks for something newer and sleeker and easier to user. Behold.

64 Gig! and it has FM Radio and voice recorder too.

64 Gig! and it has FM Radio and voice recorder too. Smaller and more compact with more features.

Loading it is SO easy. It doesn’t have a special cord either. So win win there.

Just drop you music files in the Music Folder. I loaded one album and played around with it. The sound is good, the function is good and the battery life is great. The only downside is that the screen is as you can see above, small. So the titles of the songs, that are usually album name – track title are almost always off the screen. So it looks like all the tracks are the same. However for me, a full album listener, this is not an issue for me.

I used it while snow blowing today and it didn’t die after 10 minutes like the IPod would, and it didn’t flame out when the headphone cord pulled on it and shut down and reset. Success!

So new laptop, new MP3 player and Winamp is back in my life. Booyah.

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