Pocketful of Joules

I have a confession to make… I’m kind of computer stupid.

I mean, I can rock the crap out of some Excel, use Photoshop like a boss and find pretty much anything ever on the internet, but when it comes to the actual inner workings of a computer I’m absolutely clueless.

This usually isn’t that much of an issue, because I have a pretty awesome IT department at my job. They provide me with a work laptop and deal with any problems it might have. In fact, they even helped me out when my home computer had a virus, which was pretty great of them.

You know what wasn’t great? Lugging in an old-school computer hard drive. I swear, that thing must weigh 50 pounds and it’s way too heavy for me to carry from the parking garage, through the two entrance doors, up three flights of stairs and into the IT office. Which is why I totally packed it in a HUGE orange Heys suitcase and rolled that thing through the halls with pride. Yeah, not very convenient at all.

My home computer has been fine though. I use it to blog, internet surf and do some freelance graphic design a few times a year. It is about ten years old though, which makes it a total dinosaur in computer years. I keep putting off the purchase of a new computer time and time again, because really… it’s FINE.

Or, well, it WAS fine. I’ve been working on an easy little freelance job of designing a postcard and OH MY GOSH the computer is driving me crazy. It is so incredibly slow and outdated and I just can’t stand it anymore. Which means I need to go computer shopping – which I HATE. I always feel so stupid when the computer people start asking me about megabytes, hard drives, memory and processors. My eyes glaze over and I start drooling a little out the side of my mouth, only to rejoin the conversation by randomly shouting “There will be banana hammocks EVERYWHERE!”

Oh, do you not know what I’m talking about? Well, let’s take a little minute long break to revisit one of my favorite shows:

Okay, up to speed now? Good.

Well, I thought I was being super smart this time by asking my IT guy at work what I should get. He gave me the exact brand and MB’s I need, so I walked into the store with the goal of checking the laptop out in person. Yes, I said laptop because if something bad happens it will be much easier to bring to work. Well, I walked into Best Buy and their computer dude pretty much pointed me in a total opposite direction and recommended something else.

So now I don’t know what the heck I want!

Part of me thinks I should just ignore the whole computer issue again after I finish with this postcard design. However, I’m scared that if I keep putting it off one day it will die and never be able to be resurrected to spit out my iTunes library, all the graphic design I’ve done in the last decade and a bazillion pictures (I actually did back up 8 years of pictures on my Amazon Cloud, so I should get points for that).

Are any of you guys super smart computer types? If so, can you give me a recommendation for a PC laptop that I can use for graphic design, internet surfing, blogging and song/picture storage? My IT dude suggested a Sony Vaio with 6 – 8 GB of memory…