"Ding Dong, The Laptop's Dead..."

My Hewlitt-Packard laptop finally decided that it was going on the 120-Day Disabled List (Baseball reference required, as Spring Training is ON!). It performed reasonably well during my time at Ft McCoy, Ft Lewis, and Iraq, but it never really recovered after ingesting all Middle Eastern that sand and dust. Lately, my laptop started going dark while in the middle of projects, freezing up for an hour or so, and refusing to obey my commands altogether. No computer of mine is going to get away with ignoring CTRL - ALT- DELETE, boy howdy!
The last straw came last night, as I was attempting to do a critical task on a Department of Defense (DoD) website.  It had taken me about an hour to input all of the data required, and just as I clicked on "Submit Form for Digital Signature", Mister Laptop emitted the computer noise equivalent of "Take This Job and Shove It!" No amount of rebooting, cajoling, or threats to insert a Yanni music CD seemed to have any effect.  I went to bed, defeated and despairing. This morning, I got Mister Laptop running, but not much else. (Fortunately, John, our unit administrator and worthy soldier, was in the office today, and offered to assist with my DoD task...which is now done!)
Back to Mr. Laptop...It was clear that I would need to replace him, permanently. Since our primary computer is a Mac, with which Army software is largely incompatible (surprise!), I needed to regain that capability, and fast.
Thanks once more to a supportive Spousal Unit, we figured out a way to make it happen without breaking the bank. A smaller, faster Dell laptop fit all the parameters. Now I'm on dueling computers, writing this while creating system recovery disks, setting up internet favorites, and downloading the required security certificates to log onto DoD systems. Let's hope the new "Mr. Laptop" gives the same yeoman service as the retired veteran did!