Errands

Two consumer durables failed to endure recently, my laptop and our lawnmower. The former, an HP Zbook having been bought secondhand a year or so ago from Tier1 and the latter a Bosch battery powered rotary lawnmower bought new five years or so ago from B&Q at Leatherhead.

In the case of the laptop, which had served well, the trouble was with the keyboard. It had started some weeks ago with the left hand shift key - trouble which resisted both blow and brush action - and then suddenly spread to a whole lot of other keys. I tried turning it upside down and tapping the dust out of the keys but that only afforded temporary relief. And I broke one the offending keys learning how to get it in and out. Tricky things! Repair was no doubt possible but was it worth it?

In the case of the lawnmower, the battery was starting to give up. BH was not getting as much lawn action per charge as she used to.

After a modest amount of research, I decided that a trip to New Malden was the way forward, home to both a big Currys and a big B&Q. Currys it seems, having swallowed up both PC World and Dixons.

First thought was to go to Motspur Park on the train with my rollator and walk from there, but in the end decided that it was a bit too far for comfort and settled for driving instead.

Wandered around the large Currys store for a bit, where there was quite a decent range of laptops on offer and settled for another HP, a brand that I am at least used to. A 17 inch Envy, with a very clean keyboard, lots of storage and hopefully lots of power. Probably an 'HP ENVY 17-da0500na 17.3" Laptop - Intel® Core™ Ultra 7, 1 TB SSD, Silver'. 17 inch good as while I need to be able to move it about, I don't need to be able to use it on the move. I am not the visiting auditor, creeping around someone else's office, making notes as I go.

Onto B&Q, where I pushed my rollator up the impressive ramp to the huge shop floor. Where I ran down a helpful lady who eventually explained that she had never seen the battery in question and I certainly could not buy another one from her. Going back to Leatherhead would be no better. My best way forward was to contact Bosch customer support, who would almost certainly be able to provide some support. She was probably all the more helpful because BH had provided me with the original receipt. Still and all, not impressed that the battery had disappeared from the shelves - even though I dare say that Bosch will do the business.

Getting down the ramp with the rollator was interesting. Not sure about a large shopping trolley filled with DIY stuff - but there were lifts for those that chickened out of the ramp.

Back home to crank up the new laptop, which turned out to be easy enough, once I had found out by search on my desktop that the 'on' button was one of the function keys. Much easier than it used to be. A touch screen which I do not yet touch very much, preferring to stick with my ancient Microsoft mouse, and various wrinkles which I need to iron out, but otherwise fine. The most complicated bit was keying in the password for the household wifi.

No action on the Bosch front yet. But this may serve to prod me into action.

PS 1: we might have failed on the northern lights, but we did score the full moon twice. Yesterday evening, high in the eastern sky; this morning (Friday), high in the western sky.

PS 2: some hours later: went to the (rather busy & whizzy) Bosch website to find that the battery in question did still exist and it then pointed me to people who might supply it. Out of stock at B&Q online, but an outfit called Tooled-Up could do the business. Hopefully a soon to be satisfied customer.

References

Reference 1: https://tier1online.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.tooled-up.com/.