Edward, my laptop, is a secondhand HP Omnibook 6000, a computer that hasn't been made since, I believe, 1999. I got him this summer with a week of loyal service. Then my brother got his hands on him and upgraded him to XP. Despite repeated attempts to undo the damage this caused, it was too late: Edward freezes all the time, usually in the middle of AIM convos. When he freezes, I don't sign off of AIM so people usually have no clue I was gone and keep talking to me, prompting me to have to tell them to repeat themselves. Edward has good days, where he goes hours or even a whole day without freezing, and bad days, where he freezes several times in a row every few minutes. I am sure spilling milk in him in September didn't help, either. (I mean, his name is Edward, for Chrissakes.)
So while I have never lost any writing to the cavern that is Edward's shaky harddrive, I am constantly afraid of him crashing for good, plus research is a pain in the ass to do because of the tendency to freeze. (I am in the habit of hitting Ctrl+S every few seconds and have been ever since I was writing on my other computer, a nine year old HP that also freezes quite often, but that's an age thing.) So yes, I am admitting that I need a new computer (despite this one technically actually being my new computer.) And I will get a new computer. Eventually.
