Well…the saga continues, but I hadn’t told you about it, so I will now.

When I left my job in December, there went the company laptop, which I had done a lot with, it was and it wasn’t like a personal laptop as well. When you’re working so many hours and you’re on the laptop, you use it, store your photos, websites, documents, hey, I planned a wedding on that thing!

Unfortunately, my Microsoft Surface Pro 3, which I loved, decided it was done. Fair enough, it had been a while and I didn’t spend as much time as I should have with it, I had my work laptop, but still, come on… The drawback with the Surface is that it couldn’t handle what I wanted to do with it, that’s what made it tough, but oh, when I got it, did I love it!

While it was still working, PSM wanted to get me something that could handle some of the things I wanted to do with it, storage-wise and handle the external hard drives I would be asking it to work with. He got me something quick and easy and it served its purpose, but it was very no frills, and very appreciated! See…some girls like bling, this girl like tech and electronics! Now…if you wanted to bling out the tech, how could I say no?! Ha ha!

Back to our regularly scheduled program. Bless PSM, I really am a lucky woman, he knew that I would be starting a new job, first looking for a new job, and I would need a good laptop, one that could handle what I needed to do with it, so away he went. He said he was going to do something to put a smile on my face, I thought he was going to Smoothie King to get me a smoothie! He was gone a while and when he came back…he indeed did have a smoothie, but he also bought me a laptop! What? Oh yeah, that’s my fella, he’s smooth[ie]… puny puny puny!

He did some research, went to Costco, looked at all the specs for what I needed and got me a Lenovo Thinkpad. It had all the things I needed, it was a laptop for one, ha ha, touchscreen, flipped into a tablet, good internal processor, RAM, internal storage, could handle external hard drives, and a few other things that would be helpful. I had never used a Thinkpad before for work, it was always Dell or HP. It was smaller, but I liked that a bit, it would be easy to travel with and it connected easily to my two additional monitors, great! I was set. Now I just needed a job! ha ha

I used the laptop to interview and I got the job! Wah hoo! And…you and I started talking again, Wah to the Hoo! While I’m using the laptop, all of a sudden the video card started acting wonky. Rebooting didn’t help, I went to Lenovo Support, tried to troubleshoot, installed drivers, you name it. Then I called Costco Concierge Service, which is what you get when you purchase computer equipment from Costco. It also comes with a 90-day return policy. I spoke with someone from support, they were great, very helpful and now I know what to do if it happens again. Fingers crossed it doesn’t.

It did…when I called back a second time, I don’t think the person I was speaking with had encountered this issue, I say that because every question she asked or every question I asked, it was answered only after consulting the guidebook. When I asked if they had ever encountered this, I was told yes, didn’t get warm fuzzies. After troubleshooting as best as she could, the only recourse was to send the laptop in to Lenovo. Um…I needed my laptop and this issue had been going on for over a week, so we took it back to Costco, that easy! I had even gotten the extended warranty, we got that back as well.

We weren’t sure if I would get another laptop at Costco, so we went to Best Buy to check out what they had to offer, the prices were comparable and they had a few more options, but for what I wanted, you couldn’t beat Costco’s return policy. As I mentioned, 90 days, plus we would get a warranty. Ok, back to Costco.

We took a chance…another Lenovo Thinkpad. Why…oh why…? I liked the weight, feel, setup, the way I could connect a hub that allowed me to connect two additional monitors and a crap ton of other stuff to it! The suck part…having to do the set up again, not the worst thing in the world, but not fun…ok, purchase laptop, purchase 3 year warranty…go home.

I get everything set up, we’re good to go, all my favorites, documents, you name it, it’s there. But…why is OneDrive driving me INSANE! Turn it off! Whew! We’re rockin’ and rollin’ with my new laptop and…seriously? Video card again, and…the laptop starts dimming and turning itself off after less than 30 seconds of perceived inactivity. What? I changed the settings to 15 minutes and it still did it, this included while I was watching recordings for work.

Call Costco Concierge Support again…sigh…talk to someone else who sounds like they’re reading out of a manual. That’s fine, tell me you’re doing that or you haven’t dealt with this issue instead of telling me you’ve dealt with it before but it doesn’t sound like it! Drivers are downloaded, tests run, install, uninstall, you name it, we tried it. After about 45 minutes…only recourse…send the laptop in to Lenovo to fix it. F…i…n…e… how do we do this? They will send a box with a label and I just have to drop it off or schedule a pick up. They said it shouldn’t take more than a few days.

In the mean time…PSM has generously offered me his MacBook Pro. I am a PC, he is a Mac…I’ve worked on them before, but not my favorite. The configuration is different, commands are different, the keyboard was larger, lots of little things, but I am very grateful!

Fast forward, not really, almost 2 weeks later and I get the laptop back. Set it up, favorites, documents, apps from the Microsoft Store. Get used to using a smaller laptop, buttons are not in the same place, there’s a backspace and delete key again! No keyboard, CTRL is what I’m used to, but still funny…I had to get used to this one all over again, almost like when I learn something new in a new language, I have to translate it into English so I can understand what is being asked, then translate it to said language. I’ll get there!

Have the laptop, all good, then…wait for it…sometimes I like to sit elsewhere to work, so I unplug the laptop to work in the living room and it d i e s!!! What?! Yes, I unplug it, it is fully charged, and it it dies. I’m done, no more, not doing it! So…back to Costco we go, it’s been less than 90 days, take it back, please!

We start looking at what they offer, keep in mind, this is not a Costco thing, this is a laptop thing! I’ve heard a lot of people who have Lenovo’s for work don’t care for them, well, I’m here to tell you, me either! I looked at a few and decided on the LG Gram 16, it’s got a 16″ LCD screen, with very little border, it weighs 2.62 pounds, lots of bells and whistles and…it’s a tablet and came with a pen, I’m a happy camper. I got it home, set it up, groan, made sure all the drivers were downloaded, registered it, got the hub set up, could only get one additional monitor to connect, but that’s ok, I still have a travel monitor if I need it. I even left the plastic protector on the cover until a few days ago in case I had to send it back! ha ha.

So far, it’s been great, I don’t want to jinx anything, but I haven’t been able to find fault with it yet, and I truly hope I don’t find fault with it any time soon, I just want to keep working and talking to you! Fingers crossed!