Laptop Problems Solved?

A few days ago, the laptop seemed to go out of commission. A stop at Best Buy to visit the Geek Squad revealed that the problem was the power cable or the power converter. A call to Gateway produced a $75 hold on my account and today, a replacement cable showed up. No converter. The cable had a sheet in it indicating that Gateway considered the part "expendible" and that there was no charge for it. There was also a return sticker. So I don't get it. They're getting their old cable back and I want my $75 back.

Anyway, I'm back to using the laptop again -- the adventure made me realize how much I missed the wide screen. I've kept the speakers from the desktop computer because they're better. Another thing to disconnect and reconnect later when I "go mobile," but that's not happening with so much frequency anymore. Another legacy from this adventure is my switch to Firefox. It's faster and I like the tabs instead of twelve different windows down on my taskbar.

And, I'm going to look into an external hard drive for data backup.