So for the past year my laptop was giving me trouble and my battery wouldn’t charge, so I had to carry my charging cord with me everywhere. It added an extra pound to my baggage and was annoying, but I lived with it.
Then, a little over a month ago, my computer started really acting up – it would restart when I was working on a paper, or black screen in the middle of surfing the internet, but weirdly seemed/appeared to still be on (fan blowing, music still playing, indicator lights on). In those cases I had to reboot and got this really ugly and unwelcome screen prompting me to “Start Windows 7 normally?” which I always did. Once, believe it or not, my computer even showed a green screen. What?? Technology can be crazy sometimes.
At the time I didn’t have the time to research what the problem was, so I kept on living like this for a few more weeks. When there was a lull in my work I decided I needed to do something about it. I didn’t want my computer to restart improperly one too many times and possibly run the risk of losing all of my data. So I gave it into the bookstore’s Computer Repair Shop and prepared to be without my own laptop for a week or two.
Lucky for me, even though I was going to be Toshiba-less, I didn’t also have to be laptop-less. The University offers an AWESOME laptop loaning program through their Learning Environments Computer Labs.
The rules:
- You can loan Macbook Pros (with a charger and carry case) for FREE with your USCID.
- You have the laptop for four hours, and you can bring it with you anywhere! (yes, that includes anywhere off campus. If you want to bring it to a cafe in Little Tokyo [which I totally did], then you totally can!!).
- You can renew it once (for another four hours) by calling in, so you can essentially have it out for a total of 8 hours.
- If you want it for longer than 8 hours, all you have to do is come back into the computer lab and physically return it and check it out again.
I basically have lived this way for the past 3 weeks, and feel like quite the laptop-nomad. Unfortunately I received some bad news from the computer repair shop, and it turns out that my motherboard is totally messed up so I need to buy a new laptop. I’ll continue loan USC’s Macbooks until I have the time to fully research the best laptop for me. I have my eyes set on a few pretty special ones, but I have to be sure that they will be good quality laptops that won’t fail on me like my old Toshiba did after 2 years!
I’m so thankful for this program that completely saved me so many times in the past few weeks!
