A little more than a year ago I was spending a few months living at home in my parents basement. I was in between jobs and therefore had little spending money. I was also still lugging around a desktop computer that I had owned since freshman year of college. The war in Lebanon was in full heat, so my ideal was to sit on the couch, use my dads laptop, and watch the war unfold. Eventually my dad made me an offer: do some research for him and get paid with a new computer of my choice under $2,000. This may seem a little steep to some, but the research I was doing was no joke – it took me over a week of long, 8-10 hour days and I ended up with a 25 page chronology plus an even longer document of another more detailed chronology and analysis. He was only paying me what he would pay anyone else for such a job.
When I was finished I immediately began researching laptops. I had not yet been properly introduced to the world of Mac, so only looked for PC’s. I knew what I wanted – a laptop with superb graphics (for game playing), tons of space, great processor, and that’s about it. I knew I only wanted to do three things on it: write, use the internet, and play games. Mostly write. My brother recommended looking at Sony Vaio and when I checked them out I liked what I saw. I decided on the FE 690 and went through the page to add and delete features to my liking. I ordered the computer and I loved it – the graphics were great, it was fast – it was a little clunky, and big for a laptop, but it’s exactly what I wanted.
I began working at my current job and used my Vaio for the first few months. I was eventually needed PowerPoint but unfortunately the version of Office I had on my computer did not have PowerPoint. So I downloaded a Trial version of Microsoft Office Standard Edition (with PowerPoint). Once the trial ran out, the software deleted itself from my computer, but also decided to delete the version of Microsoft Office that had come with my computer.
I panicked.
