Intel Decide

My laptop is so old that its camera needs a cataract removal the day-before-yesterday – that’s how urgent it is, not bad English as you have possibly surmised (having read earlier posts of mine with restrained tolerance).  

The sound emanating from it - the laptop, not my English - resembles a rasping cough of someone with a permanently fossilized tonsil that has merged with a free-floating collar bone.  And when I key a few words in, I go off, have a cup of tea and return in time to be informed that there was an error by an idiot at the other end of the keyboard.  The battery, of course, popped off long ago, which, if you did not know, is the second fastest known way to convert a laptop into a desktop (the fastest is to use Fevicol on the desk.  Is jod ka koi tod nahi. End of sponsored feature).

So, you are asking, what prevents me from buying another laptop?  Well, I don’t know if you are similar in this respect, but choices confuse the hell out of me.  After much hemming, hawing and hanging (not me, as you guess, but the old laptop), I decided to buy one.  This decision did not do much for the stock price of HP or Dell, of course, but I did get the distinct feeling that I was contributing to the World Economy In A Time Of Need.

 Everybody will tell you that there’s only one thing that matters in this decision: the choice of chip or processor, whatever that thing is.  I knew right away that it had to be Intel because there’s a good friend who works there and one always needs to know whom to abuse with those four words I learnt in Khan Market in Delhi, so that was sorted (he doesn’t know yet, so keep it to yourself). 

Once you decide that it’s Intel, you have a choice of

a) 11^th generation of Intel Core i5 or
b) 14^th gen of i3 or
c) 7^th gen of i7 or
d) the uncle-in-law of the 19^th gen of i-something (which would make it 18^th bloody gen)
..and on and on.

And I am just beginning.  There are heaps of generations of heaps of i-whatever-odd-number. A vital tip: if you plan to check with google chacha about which is superior to which, there are two periods of any day that you should not choose: before 11 am and after 11 am.   Because you instantly feel like a congenital condemned genetically-one-chromosome-missing dud. There is nothing – zilch, shunya, nil, el cero, naught, cipher, laddu - online that can tell a human being (not a techie.  The two species are mutually exclusive) anything useful; using geek-talk that reads suspiciously like a song played at 2X speed, you are told – hold your breath - …..that it all depends on what you use it for. Since this is true for toothbrushes as well, even I can tell you that (at normal, not 2X, speed) and leave you deeply impressed. 

So, all I now know is that I am 34^th gen of a matrilineal line of Mallus.  Let Intel try and match that and then we will talk.  Till then the World Economy Can Go Stick On A String (recommended: Fevicol.  Zor lagake haiyaa).