Writing on my laptop

No, not right now. :) I'm using a work desktop to write this post.

My HP laptop has been out of novel writing duty, since its hard drive crashed last spring, taking much of my novel with it. After a few months, I did put in a new hard drive to resurrect it - but despite all my effort, I couldn't get Microsoft Word to run. Word 2003 would crash just 5 seconds or so after launching - and there was nothing I could do about it.

Not even the required and recommended patches from Microsoft would solve the problem. And since my copy is an OEM version that came with the computer, I don't think there are any special "plug-ins" that would be incompatible with Windows Vista, and I am confounded.

For now, I put in ancient WordPerfect 9 (circa 2000) into the computer - and at least it works. And with my Bay Area trip coming up, I want to make sure that I can journal, or even write a few scenes, during my trip - and WordPerfect will let me do just that. (It will also save in Rich Text, which will be recognized by Word and just about any other word processor.) Looking forward to doing some writing - I hope to find lots of inspirations during my trip.

And next time, I'll just buy a basic MacBook and enjoy the same trouble-free existence that my iMac desktop enjoys. But that won't be for a few years.