After 6 years of doing all the hard digital work, her laptop went down with a whirr. She described it at best and I couldn’t hold my laughter. She reminded me of Ellen Feiss, the Stoned Apple Girl. Don’t know what I mean? Here it goes.

This commercial became a viral sensation before the concept of “going viral” even existed. It’s from 2002, long before the days of Twitter, TikTok, and iPhones. Tess wasn’t even born then, but now she reminds me of Ellen, especially in how she described her laptop’s demise - complete with similar beeps and growls.

With Tess starting school in a few weeks, We found ourselves browsing for a new laptop. Her requirements are refreshingly straightforward: it needs to run The Sims 4 and Minecraft, have the right aesthetic (or ‘vibe,’ to use the correct parlance), and avoid looking like a typical gaming laptop.

OK.

We did some tabswitching to compare various online retailers, specs from sites I didn’t know existed, like comparing specs for games on various laptop graphic cards. Half of the time I didn’t have a clue what I was looking at, but as long as the color of the testresults is not red, I’m fine with it.

We made a decision to go with a Lenovo Ideapad laptop with an external optical drive. Because not only does she still have love for the Sims on physical CD’s, she also collects DVD’s from 90s movies. The kid will be alright. But first she needs to graduate.