It’s not as though I’m the world’s biggest procrastinator or anything, but I put things off just like anyone else. For one thing, there’s that wall in the basement I mentioned in a previous post; there’s the pair of socks I stopped knitting for no reason when I starting writing on a regular basis; the bookbinding projects that have been suspended in mid-air for some time. Then there’s the projects that I haven’t even started yet – the barn door baby gate and the garbage bin corral come right to mind. And right now I’m putting off going to the store for caramel rolls because I got bit by this prompt.

The big thing that I’m putting off right now with that “shoot, Jack, or give up the gun” type of procrastination is committing to a writing machine. Right now, in fact, I am writing this post on a laptop I picked up at Office Depot yesterday – but I’ll start at the beginning. I’ve been writing most of my posts from my phone or our iMac at home. But I have this issue where the iMac keeps me stuck in one spot and the phone is not the most convenient or robust way to blog. So I tried doing some blogging from my Nexus tablet, which had been more of a pricey e-reader for me, but the blogging experience from that was sub-par as well because either it wants to load mobile versions of websites or the WordPress app for Android would frustrate me with its lack of features and its bugginess. The iPhone app is buggy too, for what it’s worth, but it works better for mobile blogging.

So I started thinking about getting an inexpensive laptop for blogging and just for getting me away from the computer armoire when I have to do things on a screen. The most inexpensive laptops I have been able to find so far are the low-end Chromebooks, which are based on a really neat premise: most everything we do now is on the web, so why not just base your entire operating system around a web browser, appify everything, and then offload your storage to the web? Well, it works decent in practice, I think. But people come in two flavors – either they get and love Chromebooks for what they are, or they think that Chromebooks are crippled laptops and too expensive for what they are. I’m one of the first camp, but I have come to agree with the expense part. I brought home a $250 Samsung Chromebook for a week to try it out. I liked it, but I took it back because I’m waiting to sell the Nexus and at the time Amazon was selling it for a $30 discount, so I thought I could get away with paying about $80 and tax.

Sadly, I was not able to pull the trigger in time because Amazon and I don’t have the type of relationship where they tell me when they’re pulling a sale on something parked in my cart.

Then I started looking at other stuff. My wife asked me if a Chromebook would be enough because of my heavy reliance on intricate spreadsheets for budgeting – and she was right to bring that up, because Chromebooks can’t do Excel sheets. Google’s spreadsheet program doesn’t have all the features I need yet, and so isn’t compatible with my budget book or my ledger book. Thanks to Excel, I can actually budget out a whole year ahead of time in a couple of hours. I thought, well, maybe I should look at Windows machines. Then I thought I should hold out and save up for a MacBook Air. God, I would love that. But they start at a thousand dollars, and that brings up a whole ‘nother host of concerns and uncertainties. I’d rather have a truck than a computer that expensive right now.

I stopped at Office Depot after work yesterday and I chose this machine. It’s an Asus laptop with Windows 8, which I have no experience with at all, prior to turning it on last night. Turns out – it’s not that bad. Weird, but I’m already starting to like it. This one is classified as a sub-notebook, which means it’s a little small. But I like the screen size a lot, and it’s light – although not as light as Samsung’s Chromebook – and here’s the big seller: for a hundred dollars more than the Chromebook, I have twice the RAM, a 500GB hard drive (vs. 16GB SSD), two video out options, decent sound, a more robust processor that outperforms its peers, and a touchscreen. Holy hands-down, Batman.

So I’ve been procrastinating on this issue. I have up to two weeks to take this laptop back, but I’m thinking I can figure it out in one. I just don’t want to jump in all willy-nilly, you know?

I kind of like it, though.

This post was prompted by today’s Daily Post prompt.

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