The Old Laptop

I guess I knew this had to happen eventually.

So, the old laptop I’ve been using for things off and on for the last five years or so is finally at the end of its lifespan.  It still works reasonably well, don’t get me wrong.  I used it to write this, after all.  But come this time next week, we’ll be a couple days past the end of Microsoft supporting its Windows XP operating system.  Gotta admit, XP was a good OS.  It got me through quite a lot.  But as of right now, it’s going on 15 years old, which is quite a long time, especially in computer terms.

Back in the 2000-2001 era, when this OS first came out, I was just finishing up my partly-failed bachelors degree and was getting into the best years of my fan-fiction writing career.  Of course, for some of that, I was still using a machine that ran Windows 95, which was also a good system, but one that ultimately didn’t have nearly the longevity that XP has.

XP saw me complete an associate degree that didn’t work out quite as I’d hoped either, start a career as a blogger and sometimes YouTube video person that continues today on one of its successor systems.  There’s been a lot of good stuff that’s happened over the years that this OS has been in use.

But times change, and we’ve got to change with it.  Windows XP is the better part of 15 years old now, and so’s the laptop I’m writing this on, and both are really starting to show their age.  What might have been top of the line for the guy who bought it and then sold it to me second-hand is now slow enough as to be almost useless for almost anything I’d need or want to do with it.  I’ll still keep it around, of course.  It’ll still be a passable backup until I can get enough money together to replace it.  I’m hoping that won’t take long, but one never knows.

This may be the last blog I ever do on this laptop, but, again, one never knows.  We’ll just have to see how things go.