New Computer!

One really great thing about living in Germany is the postal service. 

How come? Well, let’s put it this way: On Tuesday I ordered a new laptop, and it arrived the next day. Woo!! Of course, I immediately had to set it up and play around with it until I had it more or less at a customized state I’m happy with (don’t understand why they put Windows 8 on it, but maybe it’ll grow on me?). By then it was unfortunately too dark to take proper photos (I don’t have a great camera, and the lighting in my room is not the best), so photos had to wait for today!

I got a Medion Erazer X7829 (MD98774), which is a gaming laptop with the stats I wanted for a work computer. Since I’ll want it mainly for heavy Photoshop use (think many layers and different brushes), a bunch of RAM was a must, but hard to find. Most gaming laptops don’t have much RAM, contenting themselves with 8 or even 4GB – definitely not enough for my purposes! 

Luckily, I did find one or two laptops that had 16GB RAM, and settled on this one. It has great stats, and a big screen (17,3”), and though there are a few small things I don’t like, in general I’m pleased with it so far. 

The things I don’t like: 

1) The touchpad buttons are really hard to press (which hopefully will get better with use)
2) The touchpad itself is a bit rough and hard to use (which will also hopefully improve)

3) When I hooked up my tablet, Windows for some reason thought I had a touchscreen and gave me pop-up instructions to swipe my finger in from the edge to switch between applications – and the window wouldn’t go away unless I unplugged my tablet! And then it reappeared nearly each time I did something else with the tablet! I’m thinking I’ll only hook up the tablet when I already have Photoshop or whichever application I’ll use open, but it’s a hassle.

4) I’m not sure why, but today my computer had everything in Spanish. Probably because I added Spanish to the list of keyboard languages, but the language should still have been English, since that’s the language on the top of my list! So strange. Guess it’s a good thing I do actually speak Spanish.

5) There are a bunch of “apps” and programs on there that needed to be uninstalled or deleted, but there remain some that I can’t get rid of before I’m completely sure what they are. I have a feeling they’re useless, but gotta check first.

6) I’m a bit annoyed that the apostrophe key is so far on the right – I’ve gotten used to it being to the left of the Enter key, not over it! That’ll take some getting used to. (Photos of my otherwise awesome German keyboard below!)

Those points aside, I am really happy with the computer. It was easy to set up, fun to play around with, didn’t take long to get used to Windows 8 (though I still prefer previous versions), and the computer runs quickly and silently. It even came with a really neat drawing/painting app, which of course made me happy! Also, I liked being able to set a full-screen image for my lock screen, though I wish I could do the same for the menu screen. I guess the blue swirls aren’t so bad. (It’s the icons that are.)

It also seems like Photoshop and other applications will be really easy to use – playing around with the tablet yesterday was tons of fun, and I’m looking forward to doing more! I’ll have to get used to using a laptop at a desk, though – I’ve gotten so used to having my laptop in my lap, but the new notebook’s a bit big for that! I still have my first laptop for that, though – and this one will probably remain my computer for browsing purposes. The other one should be mostly reserved for work. 

We’ll see how long that resolution lasts! 

See what I mean about the apostrophe key being over the
Enter key?

This beautiful image (which I'm using for my
lock screen) is by Kirk Quilaquil.

And my current desktop image is a gorgeous
shark mermaid by Neolucky.

Seriously cleaned up the Start menu until only the most basic 
applications are shown there: Microsoft Word, Skype, Notepad...

In fact, my computer also has a name. I never named my first laptop, not having seen a need, but when I first turned on the Medion computer it actually asked me to name it! That started a frantic search for a suitable name. My first thought was "George", because that's Mom's go-to name for everything, but my sister's computer already has that name - then I thought "Nuria", because that's a name I've considered my "Spanish name" since I first started learning the language (Thank you, Frau Ortleb!), but I didn't really think it suited the computer. I couldn't quite decide whether a male or female name would suit, so I turned to the internet - this list of Shakespearean characters, to be precise. I thought an S name, to suit my own, would be nice. 

Scrolling through, I soon found myself drawn to the name "Lord Saye", and thought that "Saye" was an appropriately genderless name when the "Lord" was removed from it. Thus, my computer was named Saye. Here's to a long and fruitful partnership!