laptop dithering

Today, we have laptop dithering.

I am going to need to bring my laptop with me to SF to work on this book. I’ve got 6 or something hours of flight time both ways which I could use to work on the book, but I have about 6 minutes worth of battery for Little, which is my 5 year old Sony Vaio laptop.

I can’t find battery chargers for the smaller Vaio batteries that Little uses. This means I need to either suck up the fact that I’m going to have to buy a heavier, longer lasting battery that can be recharged while Little’s plugged in (which I don’t want to do, because the larger batteries prop the computer up and change the angle of the keyboard, and I’m *used* to Little as she is) or a smaller one like she’s got now which only holds 2 hours of charge. There’s no point in buying more than one of either of those, because I can’t find chargers for them, and it’s bad for batteries to just hang out unused and uncharged.

I’ve found 7 and 10 hour sheet batteries which would certainly add to Little’s weight (she weighs less than 3 pounds), but would provide all the power I needed for flights and stuff. They have their own AC adapters, so I could also get a small battery like she’s got now, and all would be well. Except the sheet batteries say they’re good for the whole 505 series, but my specific 505 isn’t listed, so I’m dubious. I have a phone number and I’ll call in a few minutes.

The thing about those is that they cost between three and four hundred dollars, which is a third of the cost of the original computer, and if I also got a second smaller battery (which I would), we’re looking at a third to half the price of a *new* laptop.

*Dither*.

In Little’s favor are the facts that I cannot buy another computer like her. Little is the most scaled-back laptop I’ve ever seen. She has no CD/DVD-ROM, no disk drive, no internet connection. She weighs, with her battery, 2.7 pounds. She has 6 gigs of memory, which is way the hell more than I’m ever going to need; I use her for writing. Period. End of sentence. She’s a wonderful little computer and she has none of the temptations that a newer model would have. I really *really* love this computer. Presumably with another long-life battery, I could get at least another 5 years worth of work out of her; the only thing I might need to upgrade would be the Word version I use on her.

In the corner against her, she is five years old, and it’ll probably just get harder to find power sources for her. But…that’s really the only down side.

I guess I’ll go call and see if this sheet battery will work with her, and then I’ll…dither some more. o.o