“Clunk” is not a sound that you ever want to hear coming from your computer yet that’s exactly what happened last week. Bill and I each have two computers (or more, but this is not Truth or Dare) and his large laptop emitted that ominous noise indicating an eminent hard drive crash. He started looking online and several times found what appeared to be exactly what we were looking for except for all of the terrible reviews it received or the fact that it didn’t have a DVD drive, or it wasn’t touchscreen.

By chance today he was looking at an ad from one of the big box stores that had everything we wanted in a laptop including the 17-inch screen. Since we’ll be taking this overseas with us, we needed lightweight yet with as large a screen as possible to watch TV. By coincidence, as Bill was reading that ad I saw an article about how the French government is considering extending the annual TV tax to Internet modems since more people now watch programs through their computers than via the traditional television set. The fee of about $150 funds numerous radio and TV channels that cover the entire country plus international broadcasts as well. For us that will be well worth it because we can turn on the closed captions and read the French dialog as we listen to what the actors are saying.

So we’ve ended up with a new computer that Bill is now setting up. The salesman seemed disappointed when he turned down the additional cost of an extended warranty. Should we need that service it would be much cheaper just to buy a new computer in France rather than sending it back to Atlanta.