I canna give her any more, cap’n!
I‘ve been very happy with my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop since purchasing it over a year ago. I bought it online, customized it to meet my needs, and this lovely machine has performed without complaint. There’s a chip on the lower left edge of the white trim; I’m not quite sure how it got there. And I had to replace my keyboard once—Dell support was very helpful and shipped one to me by the next day.
As for battery life? Well, the battery charge lasts a long time—I can get four, four and a half hours out of my laptop if I’m not doing anything more strenuous than browsing or writing—listening to music or playing videos drains it a little faster. This is a marked improvement over the twenty minute lifespan of my Toshiba Satellite’s battery, which is one of the reasons I love this laptop so much! 
The battery’s life, however, could have been better—past tense. The original battery has reached its golden years in a little under a year and a half of service. Unfortunately, Dell’s batteries are covered under a separate “standard” 12-month warranty. If the battery fails after that, you have to buy a new one, which can be as much as $300! Talk about highway robbery.
So I began to use the Internet for something it does very well: finding good deals. With laptop batteries, this can be a challenge: every manufacturer designs its batteries differently, and quality is important—I certainly didn’t want to get a battery that only lasts me six months, or one that only stays charged for an hour.
Eventually I came across LaptopBatteryStore.ca. It ships from Canada, which is great, because that means no customs delays and prices in Canadian dollars. Furthermore, these weren’t refurbished batteries—these are batteries manufactured specifically to match the specs on each machine. So I found the battery designed to fit in an Inspiron 6400—it was $99. That’s a much better deal than what Dell was offering. It came with a 30-day money back guarantee and a 12-month warranty, same as my original battery. so even if the battery fails, I can send it back and I won’t be any worse off than I was at the start of this quest.
My battery arrived several weeks ago. So far, the battery life is as good as my original battery was when I got my computer. Nothing has exploded yet. I am quite happy to have found this deal!
Finally
The long night has ended.
Two good events have occurred in the past week to counterbalance this annoying cough that’s plagued me. Firstly, my new computer arrived on the 21st! Secondly, I am now officially done with high school.
With university approaching, I wanted a new computer. My former one, a Toshiba Satellite A70, was … performance-challenged, to say it nicely. It was a nice computer in its own right, but clunky from the start and it did not improve. While it did what you asked, the battery life was poor, and it ran too hot. It would not make a good computer for commuting between university and home. Time to upgrade!
With Seth’s assistance I went through the customization process on Dell’s website and had soon ordered my own Inspiron 6400: Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive. 
Oh, and Windows Vista. It was a tense two and a half weeks waiting for it to arrive. No one was home when the courier came, though, so I had to go pick it up at the depot. Luckily I‘ve got a great boss who let me drop by the depot while I was working to pick up my computer before the depot closed.
So on Thursday night, my computer sat in a box on my bed. I opened it, and there it was. Shiny. It was up and running in a few minutes, although getting all of my programs installed took considerably longer. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay very much attention to the Stargate series finale.
On Friday I transferred my personal files over from the old computer, and then everything was set up how I liked it. So far I am uber-impressed by the hardware. My battery life is around 4 hours. The fan is silent, but the computer doesn’t burn my legs—it’s a little hot, but all things considered, this is more than acceptable. The software, however, is annoying. Vista’s interface is great, but its functions are less than robust. Just yesterday I had to boot into safe mode because in Vista Home Premium you cannot enable the Local Users & Groups snap-in for the management console. It doesn’t let you. 
Little does Microsoft know, this only motivates me to get kozier with Kubuntu. 
And now I’m done school. Today was my data management exam, which was very easy. It was my last exam, and my last time in Westgate as a student. Next year I’ll return as an annoying alumnus who bothers his former teachers.
