The one where we bought three laptops
We have been agonising over the decision to buy our children laptops for Christmas for the last week. We talked about it over the weekend, and pretty much decided “what the hell”. My mind was made up for me on Saturday morning while walking back from town with our eldest.“What do you want for Christmas?”“You keep asking that. I have NO idea.”“There must be something you would like?”“Ok. My own computer.“I laughed.“Just joking. I know they cost too much.“I smiled as we walked along a little further, and changed the subject. I told my other half about our exchange later in the day and we both kind of resigned ourselves to it. While we appreciate that the kids will get a LOT of use from the computers, they seem like a very insular thing to have. When they share the desktop computers at home (we have two), or the iPad, they either work together, or figure out who's turn it isand there is value in doing that. There is also value in not having everything. Only our eldest (14 years old now) has an iPod, but we wouldn't spend the money on an iPhone for her. Maybe if she can look after a half-decent phone for a couple of years, we might consider it for her 16th birthday, but not before.
Anyway. We decided to buy the new laptops. I looked online this morning at work, and felt that curious empty feeling that appears when you discover you've picked quite possibly the most popular Christmas present in the country. No shops had any stock of the particular laptop we had been looking at. None. Nada. I called the sales hotline of one of the bigger chains of stores, and after waiting on hold for ten minutes a girl picked the phone up.“Do you have any HP Stream laptops in stock at any of your stores?”“That's the blue one, isn't it” (she said without pausing)“Yes”“We have had people calling all morning about them. Sorrywe cannot confirm when we will get any more stock either”After searching perhaps ten online retailers, I called my other half and gave her the bad news. I think this will go down in history as the first time we have ever been involved in the race to buy anything at Christmas, and we failed before we even began. I guess we actually gave up before we began.
After doing a bit of research online, I found something out. Acer make essentially the same laptop. It's in a different body shell, but the innards are identical, and they are thesame price. I found a local retailer with over 20 of them in-stock, and placed the order immediately. They arrive at the office tomorrow.
After putting the order in, I did some more reading, and found outby luck- that we had ended up with the better laptops anywaybecause the Acers are easier to upgrade than the HPs. You can replace the memory and solid state storage easily and cheaplymeaning they will last for years. They're also not garish colours, which means the kids won't be so self conscious about using them in publicwhich probably matters a lot to our 14 year old.
Roll on Christmas morning, and an hour for me spent configuring three laptops (read: installing Minecraft) for three impatient girls