I observed my 77th birthday on October 14, 2025, the birth date I share with Dwight D. Eisenhower (per my previous blog article) and Charlie Kirk. Charlie, alas, was not alive this year to celebrate his 32nd birthday - with his wife, children, and the rest of us. But on that date, President Trump posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie – a well-deserved birthday gift.

Microsoft, the giant software firm, celebrated my birthday by discontinuing its support of Windows 10, the operating system that was installed on my “old” laptop – forcing me to buy a “new” laptop (because my “old” laptop could not handle Windows 11). What a birthday gift! 

I could have struggled forward with my unsupported software and Microsoft did offer me a couple of alternatives (for a fee), but I ponied up and bought myself a new laptop for my birthday. I suspect that is what they wanted me to do.

My “old” machine had served me well. I can’t even remember when and how I obtained it – whether I purchased it, or maybe it was a hand-me-down from my son. It had worked over the years, as I typed out and published my ten books – but it was starting to show its age.

Of late, we would go through a rough cycle together. It would literally take upwards of an hour to boot up and clear all the registers (or whatever) before it would work smoothly. It would then work “kinda fine” for a week or so, getting a bit more finicky, significantly slower, and warm (physically hot) before I would be forced to shut it down and start over. Because it was so hard to boot up, I seldom did – avoiding boot ups like the plague. I always had a feeling that someone in the Soviet Union or China was mining bitcoins on my laptop (thus the heat), but I could never prove it.

And then there is the keyboard (in the photograph above). Over time, as I wrote my ten books, the keys started to disappear. I don’t know if they were scraped away – atom by atom; or dissolved away by my acidic fingers. The A, S, H, L, N, M, comma, and period keys were affected the most. You can see what remains of the nail polish that I applied to the M, comma, and period keys – to help this old “hunt and pecker” locate them. The polish applied to the “N” Key completely disappeared. 

The Bottom Line

This is the first article that I have written (typed out) on my “new” laptop. It seemed to go well. I wasn’t interrupted multiple times by “Word is not responding” messages (which was a problem lately with the “old” laptop). It was nice to see all the keys identified when I was hunting and pecking. It took me a while to find the “undo” feature that I so often use, and I still hit the “caps lock” key with my pinky when I aim for the “A” key – but no more than usual.

My “new” laptop is an HP machine, as was its predecessor. I Purchased it at Best Buy – from their “value” laptop collection – not knowing exactly what that meant. My main concerns were price (i.e., cheap) and screen size (i.e., big). Per the salesman, it seems I might not be able to install some “apps,” but I don’t think that will be much of a problem. I am something of a meat and potatoes kind of computer guy – documents and pictures. The speed of the graphics chip is not of much interest to me. Apps are for phones as far as I am concerned. 

I also wanted to buy a cheap (i.e., inexpensive) laptop, so that I could deduct it from my business (i.e., writing/author) expenses, without attracting the attention of the Internal Revenue Service. I fear that they are already concerned about my lack of profits from my writing endeavors – no need to push it.

Now the hard part – using backups, OneDrive, and whatever else to transfer my old documents (e.g., book manuscripts) and pictures (e.g., book covers) over to the new laptop. I fear I will not be able to move my Photoshop program to the new machine. I may have to keep the unsupported “old” laptop around to use that program. I already keep my “oldest” laptop (a Dell with an unsupported Windows XP operating system) to print things occasionally (via a cable) because the wireless printer I bought goes through ink cartridges like popcorn. As you can see, I am severely “IT challenged.” Wish me luck.