Lisa's Laptop

During Christmas, the keyboard on Lisa's laptop -- the one that we had to send to Dell service to replace the keyboard and screen when she dumped it off a table -- started flexing badly. It's as though a support underneath the upper left corner of the keyboard has broken. As my own laptop is the same model, I can easily compare them, and there is clearly something not right with hers. She sent the computer back with me and told me it wasn't a high priority. This weekend is a good time for dealing with low-priority jobs, so I submitted a support request to Dell. Given that Dell replaced the keyboard a few months ago, I have some hope that this time that they'll fix it without more money out the window.

Clearly the kind of computer Lisa needs is a Panasonic Toughbook. Alas, it looks like a model configured the way we'd want would cost on the order of $5000. And I suspect that it's nearly impossible to order one without wireless, and Lisa hates wireless networking. Unless there is a hardware switch to disable the wireless -- software switches are useless in her opinion -- she'd be very uneasy using the machine. That assumes we could even come up with the money to pay for it, which is unlikely.