18-11-24 Saturday - Asus C302 - I've only gorn an dunnit!

So I took advantage of the Black Friday offer at Argos and got an Asus C302 for £399.99, which was on sale at £100 or 20% off. I also used my "Smart Spending" scheme at work to get a further discount of 6%. So, all-in, the laptop cost me £376.

It's impressive. The screen is bigger than the C101 I already had, but I'm getting used to it very quickly. Also, it's HD, which is noticeable. And the keyboard is backlit, which is nice.
Now I need to sell my C101 and get some money together so that I can pay for this beast. I might be updating this blog more often than usual, to ensure that I am getting my money's worth out of this chromebook. And I should be putting money aside to cover the bill when it eventually arrives, which means not going out, which means more time sitting in front of this and spouting inane waffle.
What a treat, I bet we can't wait...
TTFN.

18-11-13 Tuesday - Coming Back to Blogger

Well, I tried the sunlit uplands of a WordPress blog hosted by GoDaddy, but it turned out to be neither elevated nor sunlit.

I looked at what I was spending in order to maintain my domain ownership, and my quarterly Wordpress hosting costs, and then compared that against the vague ramblings I was / am publishing, and it didn’t quite add up.

To be frank, this is an exercise in vanity. No-one cares about it, least of all me, but I shall carry on regardless because that’s what I do.

Really this is just a note to myself; a record of what I was (maybe) thinking at the time. I’ve already surprised myself by looking back at how even-handed I was pre-Brexit whether to vote Remain or Leave, when it’s quite clear that Remain is and was the sensible option, and there may be other things that I can look back on and surprise myself.

What made me look at my costs, and the benefits? It was an email I received from GoDaddy, advising me that I had possible malware on my blog. When I looked at the files they referenced, they were all WordPress files. when I rang them to advise that I hadn’t installed any custom files, they responded that these files might cause an issue, but they could provide some security for about £80 per year. I realised then that my vague meanderings weren’t worth what I was paying to GoDaddy. I’ve been paying £6 per month in quarterly instalments for a basic managed WordPress account, and then I paid nearly £80 to own the .com domain for 5 years and £60 for the .co.uk domain. £140 for five years of vanity publishing, and (£18*4*5=) £360 for the WP hosting just doesn’t add up, in my view. I’m happy navigating the backwaters of the blogosphere, hoping to add a note of common sense here or there.

It took me a while to work out how to get back to viewing my blog on Blogger, I had replaced the theme with the Blogger to WordPress plug-in code, and so I set a new theme and voila! My blog reappeared almost like magic. I will take a few days, I think, to mess around with the settings and the look of the blog and get it the way I like it.

I shall continue to plug away on Blogger.com and be happy in chuntering away to myself here. I’ll update my GoDaddy hosted website (thatrobthorley.com) as long as I can, by copying and pasting, but really the blog of record will be this one, https://robthorley.blogspot.com/.

TTFN.  

18-11-01 Thursday - Asus C302 Chromebook

I have decided that I want an Asus C302 chromebook. I like my little Asus C101 Flip, and it is extremely portable, but I like the idea of a back-lit keyboard, a slightly bigger full HD screen, and the power of an M3 processor.  

The problem is that an Asus C302 costs £500. That’s quite a lot for a Chromebook, especially when I don’t really use it sufficiently to notice the difference between the 10.1” screen of the C101 and the HD 12.5” screen of the C302. I do a bit of writing in the evenings, and a bit of surfing, but not much apart from that.  

I’ve read some reviews and it seems that the C302 is the best value for money chromebook in town. With 4gb of RAM and 64gb of memory, it’d certainly be enough for my needs for a few years. I’m kind of hoping that there might be a special offer for Black Friday, but that would need the kind of luck I don’t get.  

I do love a new bit of kit though. I’ve been watching a few C302s on eBay and they tend to go for a fair sum. I probably wouldn’t use it any more than I currently use my C101, so it would probably be a waste of £500. I’ll probably stick with what I’ve got, to be fair. It’s nice to dream though. And I can always keep a lookout on eBay, just in case one of these turns up cheap 🙂.  

TTFN.