On borrowed time on a borrowed computer

My poor computer, which has been on its last chips for months, if not years--it's almost five years old--finally gave up the ghost Friday afternoon. There I was, innocently attempting to turn the computer off for Shabbat/Sabbath when it froze in mid-shut-down. Several vain attempts at rebooting later, I called over the hubster in a panic. He finally gave up and hit the "panic button," i.e., the on-off button on the CPU tower, himself. (You may be amused to know that I've been so thoroughly brainwashed about using only the Start menu for shut-down that I'd completely forgotten that there was another way to turn off the computer!) I got the Shabbat candles lit barely half a minute before candle-lighting time.

My husband was kind enough to lend me his old laptop. The problem is that, since some of the hubster's accounting applications are not compatible with his new laptop, I have to be prepared to hand back his old one at a moment's notice. Then, of course, there's the great fun of trying to type on a regular keyboard balanced on my lap--laptop keyboards are really rough on my carpal tunnel syndrome--while mousing around on the laptop itself--we ran out of ports that would accommodate any of our current "mice." There's also the major detail that my husband's old laptop multitasks even more slowly than my late lamented desktop. So don't be surprised if it takes me forever to respond to comments. I never know when I'm going to have a computer available, or how quickly I'm going to be able to type, mouse, and post.

I've asked the hubster to try to get a computer repair person on a day when he doesn't teach. Wish me luck, because, if this computer can't be repaired, I probably won't be able to shop for another one for at least three weeks, given that today is only two days before the U.S. tax deadline and less than a week before Pesach.

The good news is that I did a complete back-up of My Documents on an external hard drive only about three weeks ago, and am generally pretty scrupulous about backing up any document that I've created or updated on any given day. So I probably haven't lost any documents.

Computer shopping advice cheerfully accepted.