How Does it Feel to Lose a Laptop
Good evening, my nonexistent readers! I hope you’re all doing well. I’m also doing very well, as I’m still able to write this blog post today, about two weeks after I actually lost my laptop. What? Yeah, it’s kinda ironic for a Computer Science student to lose his own computer. But, it wasn’t completely unexpected ….
Alright, so you should’ve already known that I like to tell things chronologically, often spanning a respectably long period. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Back in August, I entered the sophomore year of college. I was relieved, because I don’t have to deal with those high school subjects that I don’t really like, so now I can focus on the fun stuff: computers and softwares. But I also had some worries. One of them is that I might have to carry my (now lost) laptop around quite often.
My old laptop is a 14-inch HP 1000 with 2nd gen Intel Core i3 and 2GB of RAM. Back then in high school, it is one of the best laptop in my class, only beaten by the 4GB i5 Acer of my friend, and (perhaps) a Macbook Air. But, alas, it has aged significantly. The once decent 2GB of RAM is now struggling just to maintain a few tabs on the browser. The old i3, although quite powerful, but is extremely battery draining (and hot) compared to current generation of processors. The keyboard has some malfunctioning keys. And, the worst part, the battery can’t sustain any longer than 15 minutes on light browsing.
It’s pretty obvious, I have to get a new laptop. Hence, I decided to start saving. I also did some research on new laptops that fall under my budget. I was quite surprised. A lot of things have changed over these 5 years (when I bought my old laptop). CPUs have become very power efficient. I can get an i3 with the same performance as my old one, but it only takes half the power, and therefore it can roughly translates to double the battery life. GPUs are even crazier, the current integrated GPUs can even beat a decent dedicated GPUs from a few years ago. And finally, I understand the point of super-thin and lightweight ultrabooks (I used to plug in my laptop all the time).
In the end, I have a list of a few laptops with prices around Rp7.000.000-10.000.000 ($500-800). They all have a 7th gen Core i5 CPU, at least 4GB of RAM, and 1TB HDD (the priciest one even has an extra SSD). Nice. Now I just need to wait until I have enough money.
But long waiting has led me to overthink. Is it really worth the wait? Do I really need a laptop with such specs? What would I use it for, that I haven’t done or couldn’t do efficiently with my old laptop? Will I play a lot of games? Are these specs really enough? How long will it last before I have to get a new one again? If I finally get it after such long waiting, what would I do if I lost it? And that last question is going to be answered shortly.
On that morning, as I was going to leave the boarding house, I realized that I might be the last one to leave. Should I lock the gate? Ah, but nobody actually cares about that, I should just leave soon or else I’d be late to the class. I don’t think about it again after that.
On that afternoon, when I return to the house, I noticed something strange on my room’s window. There are some cable dangling on it. After I move closer, it’s clear that it is my mouse’s USB cable. I can already imagine how it went. When I finally go inside the room, I see that the black laptop on the desk has already vanished. Okay, so that’s how it is. I didn’t even freak out, as I already expected that such thing can happen (although I didn’t anticipate). I was foolish.
No, I didn’t try to get it back. I mean, even if I see someone who bring the exact same laptop, how can I convince everyone that it’s mine? I’m sure they’ve wiped the HDD clean. And that laptop is already rotting anyway.
But I did take some action to prevent the same shit from happening. I changed the layout of my room, so it’s harder for anyone to take stuff from outside. I also try to make sure that the gate is locked whenever nobody’s around.
So, on that evening, I spent the first night without my laptop. It’s somewhat frustrating. I have an assignment to run a virtual machine, but that’s definitely impossible right now. I don’t even have the physical machine. But I still have two days to finish it, I think I can do something else. But what? Ah, I’ve never tried this before. I just realized that watching anime on phone is not so bad. So, that’s how it went. Even after losing my laptop, I still managed to watch anime.
When I tell my friends about this, most of them told me to be strong and don’t be sad. Well, guess what? I’m not terribly sad. Of course, I’m upset, but only slightly. A bad grade on a quiz would make me more upset than this. In hindsight, I think it's a good thing that I lost my laptop now than later. What if lose my new laptop instead of the old one? That would be way worse.
I did lose a great deal of data (actually I had a plan to backup my entire HDD just before I lost it), but I realized that most of them are expendable. Most of them are videos and music that I can easily obtain again from the internet (and I have a fast WiFi now). Another significant portion of my HDD are junk files waiting to be deleted. I lost a lot of data on college assignment and other projects, but those aren’t really important when doing new projects, and I didn’t have any ongoing project at the time anyway. Perhaps the most important are the personal photos and other pictures (especially screenshots) I’ve collected carefully over the years (damn it, I should've uploaded them all to the cloud).
But actually the greatest loss I suffered is a significant amount of faith on humanity. I know there are a lot of kind people on this world. I also know that most people are neither evil nor kind, but just neutral. But this world has forced me to believe that some people has evil intentions, and it is quite devastating.
Wait a minute, so what am I using to type this blog post right now? I think I’m very fortunate that one of my friend had just bought a new laptop, so he has an unused laptop lying around. His new laptop? A 15-inch Asus ROG with i7 7700HQ and GTX 1050. Hmm.
Anyway, about my plan to buy new laptop. This one’s quite interesting. One day, I said to myself “Okay, f*ck it! I’m fine with Celeron!” but then realized that I was just joking with myself. I don’t think I’d be fine with anything lower than the performance of my old laptop (i3).
But how do I put up with the long wait? You know, recently, I’m very interested at this game. And this is actually one of the reason why I need a sufficiently fast laptop. Interestingly, the fact that I really want to play this game on my new laptop can be used to deter me from buying a new laptop. How?
“So, you spent hundreds of dollars to buy a new laptop. And of all things you can do with it, you use it JUST TO PLAY A F*CKING DEGENERATE VIDEO GAME?” Haha.
The Background
Back in August, I entered the sophomore year of college. I was relieved, because I don’t have to deal with those high school subjects that I don’t really like, so now I can focus on the fun stuff: computers and softwares. But I also had some worries. One of them is that I might have to carry my (now lost) laptop around quite often.
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| Image from HP Support |
My old laptop is a 14-inch HP 1000 with 2nd gen Intel Core i3 and 2GB of RAM. Back then in high school, it is one of the best laptop in my class, only beaten by the 4GB i5 Acer of my friend, and (perhaps) a Macbook Air. But, alas, it has aged significantly. The once decent 2GB of RAM is now struggling just to maintain a few tabs on the browser. The old i3, although quite powerful, but is extremely battery draining (and hot) compared to current generation of processors. The keyboard has some malfunctioning keys. And, the worst part, the battery can’t sustain any longer than 15 minutes on light browsing.
It’s pretty obvious, I have to get a new laptop. Hence, I decided to start saving. I also did some research on new laptops that fall under my budget. I was quite surprised. A lot of things have changed over these 5 years (when I bought my old laptop). CPUs have become very power efficient. I can get an i3 with the same performance as my old one, but it only takes half the power, and therefore it can roughly translates to double the battery life. GPUs are even crazier, the current integrated GPUs can even beat a decent dedicated GPUs from a few years ago. And finally, I understand the point of super-thin and lightweight ultrabooks (I used to plug in my laptop all the time).
In the end, I have a list of a few laptops with prices around Rp7.000.000-10.000.000 ($500-800). They all have a 7th gen Core i5 CPU, at least 4GB of RAM, and 1TB HDD (the priciest one even has an extra SSD). Nice. Now I just need to wait until I have enough money.
But long waiting has led me to overthink. Is it really worth the wait? Do I really need a laptop with such specs? What would I use it for, that I haven’t done or couldn’t do efficiently with my old laptop? Will I play a lot of games? Are these specs really enough? How long will it last before I have to get a new one again? If I finally get it after such long waiting, what would I do if I lost it? And that last question is going to be answered shortly.
The Theft
On that morning, as I was going to leave the boarding house, I realized that I might be the last one to leave. Should I lock the gate? Ah, but nobody actually cares about that, I should just leave soon or else I’d be late to the class. I don’t think about it again after that.
On that afternoon, when I return to the house, I noticed something strange on my room’s window. There are some cable dangling on it. After I move closer, it’s clear that it is my mouse’s USB cable. I can already imagine how it went. When I finally go inside the room, I see that the black laptop on the desk has already vanished. Okay, so that’s how it is. I didn’t even freak out, as I already expected that such thing can happen (although I didn’t anticipate). I was foolish.
No, I didn’t try to get it back. I mean, even if I see someone who bring the exact same laptop, how can I convince everyone that it’s mine? I’m sure they’ve wiped the HDD clean. And that laptop is already rotting anyway.
But I did take some action to prevent the same shit from happening. I changed the layout of my room, so it’s harder for anyone to take stuff from outside. I also try to make sure that the gate is locked whenever nobody’s around.
So, on that evening, I spent the first night without my laptop. It’s somewhat frustrating. I have an assignment to run a virtual machine, but that’s definitely impossible right now. I don’t even have the physical machine. But I still have two days to finish it, I think I can do something else. But what? Ah, I’ve never tried this before. I just realized that watching anime on phone is not so bad. So, that’s how it went. Even after losing my laptop, I still managed to watch anime.
The Aftermath
When I tell my friends about this, most of them told me to be strong and don’t be sad. Well, guess what? I’m not terribly sad. Of course, I’m upset, but only slightly. A bad grade on a quiz would make me more upset than this. In hindsight, I think it's a good thing that I lost my laptop now than later. What if lose my new laptop instead of the old one? That would be way worse.
I did lose a great deal of data (actually I had a plan to backup my entire HDD just before I lost it), but I realized that most of them are expendable. Most of them are videos and music that I can easily obtain again from the internet (and I have a fast WiFi now). Another significant portion of my HDD are junk files waiting to be deleted. I lost a lot of data on college assignment and other projects, but those aren’t really important when doing new projects, and I didn’t have any ongoing project at the time anyway. Perhaps the most important are the personal photos and other pictures (especially screenshots) I’ve collected carefully over the years (damn it, I should've uploaded them all to the cloud).
But actually the greatest loss I suffered is a significant amount of faith on humanity. I know there are a lot of kind people on this world. I also know that most people are neither evil nor kind, but just neutral. But this world has forced me to believe that some people has evil intentions, and it is quite devastating.
Wait a minute, so what am I using to type this blog post right now? I think I’m very fortunate that one of my friend had just bought a new laptop, so he has an unused laptop lying around. His new laptop? A 15-inch Asus ROG with i7 7700HQ and GTX 1050. Hmm.
Anyway, about my plan to buy new laptop. This one’s quite interesting. One day, I said to myself “Okay, f*ck it! I’m fine with Celeron!” but then realized that I was just joking with myself. I don’t think I’d be fine with anything lower than the performance of my old laptop (i3).
But how do I put up with the long wait? You know, recently, I’m very interested at this game. And this is actually one of the reason why I need a sufficiently fast laptop. Interestingly, the fact that I really want to play this game on my new laptop can be used to deter me from buying a new laptop. How?
“So, you spent hundreds of dollars to buy a new laptop. And of all things you can do with it, you use it JUST TO PLAY A F*CKING DEGENERATE VIDEO GAME?” Haha.
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