I’ve just handed over money for a laptop. I won’t be able to actually lay hands on the thing till Sunday — and I only belatedly realised it’ll be April Fool’s Day, so there will undoubtedly be something hilariously wrong with it — so in the meantime I’ll just be stewing in anticipation.

There’s one thing about the soon-to-be-mine computer that both excites and worries me, though. While the Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of RAM are thrillingly up to date when compared with my current set-up, the problem with buying a new computer nowadays is that they tend to come preloaded with Windows Vista.

Happily, I’ll be running Home Premium, rather than the cheaper Home Basic, so it shouldn’t be an entirely unpleasant experience. It might even be kind of fun; after all, even Micro Mart’s own damning cover feature on 2007’s most pointless upgrade concluded that if it were cheaper and worked with more hardware, Vista would be quite a good thing.

And since Simon’s even gone and bought a PlayStation 3, at least I won’t be alone in the using-technology-generally-not-considered-to-be-worth-the-asking-price camp.

Chalk this one up to “cautious optimism” for now, then

How am I ever supposed to break my addiction to Google when they go and offer themed skins?

I’ve just jazzed up my already-packed personalised homepage. Even better, I can fool myself that it’s for a good cause, since the background isn’t entirely white any more, which must be better for the environment, somehow. Maybe?

I’m sure there are reasons why Google isn’t quite the best thing in the world, ever, but obviously I’m easily won over by pretty colours. And a changing environment that knows what time it is, wherever you are in the world.

As per usual, I was in magpie-mode on the Tube this morning. Of the fifteen people in my carriage, I spotted four pairs of white earphones and one pair of black ones.

The woman sitting next to me was using a green iPod Mini — which isn’t all that retro, really, though it is a couple of generations of iPod ago. More interestingly, a guy a couple of seats down was playing Sonic The Hedgehog on a Sega Nomad. Yup, a console that went on sale in 1995.

I’m not really sure what that means. Other than “wow, that guy probably really takes care of his gadgets” (I’m not sure I’ve owned anything that’s lasted longer than a year, ever).

It looks like I’ve finally cracked: despite repeatedly saying I had absolutely no need for a laptop, I’m now considering buying one.

There’s an emerging pattern here, perhaps: I always said I didn’t need a mobile phone, and now I can’t live without one; I always said I didn’t need an MP3 player, and now I can’t live without one… I suspect within a couple of months of having a laptop, I won’t be able to remember how I ever coped without one. I’d like to think it’s a case of circumstances changing, rather than that I’m just a rampant hypocrite, but you never know.

So, anyway, the hunt for a suitable notebook has begun. I’ve been scouring the Internet, and popped into every shop along one side of Tottenham Court Road on my way home last night (bad time to be browsing; every salesperson in every shop was all over me, guiding me to the £1,000+ ranges) but I just can’t seem to make any sort of decision.

If I’m honest, I just want a smallish, lightish machine that I can use to write on, and maybe do some light Internet browsing, without having to sit at my desk. (That’s pretty much all I use my desktop for, after all — but the ailing desktop story is a long, boring and ongoing on.) I don’t really want Windows Vista; I’d probably want to run Ubuntu on it. But everyone’s giving me conflicting advice, and the sort of price tag I’d be looking at to encompass all this undoubtedly valid and good advice keeps escalating and escalating until I’m looking at numbers high enough that I’d never dare touch the machine in case I broke it, or even just got smudgey fingerprints on its shiny shell of perfection.

Ugh.

I wish I could stick to my guns here and not be tempted by the next model up, and the next model up from that, and the next one up from that…

(I’m not getting a MacBook, though, so you can all forget that straight away.)

Honestly, what do people really and truly use their computers for, anyway?

I was at a press briefing yesterday with a company looking to get some coverage of their products. Basically, it was all reasonably okay-looking gadgety stuff: PC speakers, iPod docks, USB fans, that kind of tat. Cheap, though. Either way, nothing exceptionally innovative; it was all stuff the market’s flooded with already.

Except these guys had an ace up their sleeves: they had these things in pink!

… Your sarcasm meter probably just shot off the scale, right? They proceeded to explain that they were aiming for a new market - “the woman” - because this new and emerging market has “started to use computers” and “they’re in cars”, too. Apparently, when these strange creatures go shopping - “with their husbands or boyfriends” - they’ll be attracted to the pink things and thus turned into bona fide tech-customers.

It’s hard to express how I feel about this without resorting to expletives. I barely kept a straight face throughout the meeting, to be honest. The thing is, yes, I do own a purple phone and a pink MP3 player. But these were things I was going to buy anyway; the fact that they’re in girly colours is just icing on the cake. I don’t honestly believe there’s some untapped market of girly girls out there who don’t buy tech, aren’t interested in it, but will be won over if only something pink is waved under their noses. If they’re not interested in using computers, what use will they have for a memory card reader - even if it is lilac?