We have all heard of the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSoD) that afflicts all us long suffering windows users but how about the ‘Black Screen of Death’ well not Death I suppose but almost anyway. Desktop users will be unfamiliar but those of you that use a laptop will have at least seen it. Unfortunately for my long serving Toshiba it came on the weekend.
Friday went flicker flicker and I though is that me or the screen, well it got worse and Saturday it was over one final flicker and out went the lights, secondary monitor still ok but laptop screen very dark. Shine a light on the screen and yep everything was there but no back-light. OK now what, this is the machine that has been running for almost 5 years straight now technology is getting a little dated (P4 1.6GHz 512MB) but still ok. End of last year saw a new battery and replacement hard drive due to failure so not a great deal left to replace but was it worth it?
I had been looking at upgrading and this looked like the perfect opportunity 
New machine or second hand?? hmmm well no rush I still can do work using just the one screen. Sunday off to check out what is on offer at Cash Converters, they occasionally have some good deals on equipment if it has sat for a bit and if I get it for the right price well I can save some $$$. Well they had a few laptops, the usual Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 machines cheap but not really what I was after. Next shelf nice little Dell P4 2.2Ghz not bad price ok, beside that a widescreen Compaq well that is going to be a bit but Ok lets look a little closer P4 3.06GHz, 768MB ram, 40GB HD $600, Ok whats the catch!
Upon closer inspection it had some wear on the silver finish and the black plastic was showing through on the touchpad and wrist rest but apart from that nothing else, compared to the Dell which was pristine it looked ratty. I asked to have a look at both quick glance over the Dell perfect but the Compaq had all the extras, everything worked (and how). It turned out it had been sitting there for a while and they really wanted to move it on as it looked like it would never sell. So I asked how much, they took it away and looked it up in the system and crunched the numbers they came back and appologised there was no case for the laptop or manual all they had was the laptop and the power supply, I looked a little put out by that and they went back to discuss it. I let them chat a bit and then went up to see them, the revised price was $470.
Did I take it, well I thought about it for a few seconds and said ok
It has joined the ranks as Number one machine with the Toshiba now reduced in rank to number two, with the size of the screen I have decided to run the system as three separate PC’s with individual monitors I may turn the number 3 machine intoa dual head and add a 4th monitor to the setup but three is enough for now. Using Synergy I control everything using the one keyboard and mouse. The Compaq runs in wide screen mode at 1280×800 and the other monitors are twin 19″ LG’s running 1024×768. Enjoy.