The Muse

Had a funny day yesterday. Jonno popped round and asked if I would help him choose a laptop. As he was interested in the budget end of the market and wanted to pay in cash PC World seemed like the best choice. So we headed off to Stockport and had a look around. They had a LENOVO G575 15.6" 4GB Ram 500GB hard disk for £299 which seemed like a good spec for that price point. Unfortunately after finally tracking down a sales rep he informed us that they had none in stock. They did he assured us have one in Aston. So back in the car heading up the motorway to Ashton, only to find we had been sold a dummy. We were pretty pissed off the salesman at Aston suggesting that the Stockport saleman should have rung through for us. He assured us that they had 34 at the Arndale centre. So off again this time to the centre of Manchester. I don't think Jonno had ever been to the Arndale centre before, its very busy and crowded. Fortunately this time they did have the laptop in stock. It still took a while to buy though the sales guy trying to sell the usual insurance, which we declined. I made the point if he wanted such insurance it would be a lot cheaper to add to his home insurance. We headed back armed with a new laptop, 3g dongle and a mouse. I unboxed it, removed a top of useless pre-installed software and put on the free Microsoft anti virus security essentials. I was quite impressed with the Laptop, the screen was bright and clear with 1366 x 768 resolution and LED backlight. The full sized keyboard was easy too type on. Overall considering the budget price the build quality was good and the speed more than acceptable for browsing and office tasks. Afterwards I sat with Jonno and helped him to set up an email account and a Facebook page. In return Jonno treated me for dinner at the Bull's Head which was very nice. I had a chicken on a bed of Choritzo and sweet potato mash. It was very tasty just a pity that they were understaffed an the food took an age to arrive.