[This post went missing - Blogger obviously playing silly wotsits - but thanks to the faithful reader who not only saw it, but saw the problem and kindly emailed the post back to me so I could repost it.]



Back to work after a week's vacation is never much fun (although I wasn't quite as overwhelmed by email etc as I'd feared I might be).

But the day cheered up when the boss came by with a box and said "don't say I never give you anything". I opened it up to find a laptop bag! Yes, they've finally arrived. (Though I did fear for a moment that maybe the bag had come but the laptop itself would be a few more days/weeks with whatever IS was doing to it). But by then the boss was back with two more boxes. Laptop and docking station.

A Dell Latitude D420 for anyone who cares. Very dinky. (I'd specifically not asked for the larger one that was on offer, as I have vague intentions of carrying this every day to use at home as well. And maybe commuting.)

Upsides
- Very easily logged onto our network and I was printing one of my documents that wasn't even on the laptop.
- An SD card reader in the side which I'd not dared to hope for.
- Trackpad and one of those little rubber things in the keyboard that I've never really tried before but wondered how they'd be.

Downsides
- The DVD rewriter is a separate unit (price I pay for lightweight and small, I guess) which means an extra thing to manage and a bit more cable.
(However, I have a plan: with several of us having been given identical machines, I'll bet there'll be someone who doesn't make much use of either their docking port or the DVD rewriter, so I might ship mine home for use there and 'borrow' someone elses when necessary here. Cunning, eh?!)
- Next to the PC you realize how large the flat screens we have on the desk are! (Or is it just that my eyes are getting old?)