Bloody FINALLY.

Eighteen hours ago, I started reinstalling everything on my laptop. (This was because there were bad sectors and it occasionally decided it didn't want to find the damn OS.) So I backed up my files. No problem, right?
Oh, you're no fool, you know how this works.
Problems included:

• Finding out I had the wrong driver CD for my laptop.
  
• Finding out that I couldn't get to the internet for some random reason because my wireless card wouldn't work and it hadn't detected my modem or my NIC because I had the wrong driver CD for my laptop.
  
• Finding that Dell's website is a pain in the ass, and you're on hold forever with Linksys, assuming you can get someone that speaks English.
  
• Windows Update is still the Great Evil, although you can disable their Padded Room features known as the security center in Services if you know what to look for.
  
• Everyone needs some kind of iPod/Nomad/external drive: I would have shot myself without my Nomad, which has all my music on it and was the temporary house of all my essential data. (granted, most of my essential data is writing and pretty pictures... still).
  
• I still believe iTunes is evil. I am starting to believe Quicktime is evil, because of the fact that it's very hard to find Quicktime without subjecting yourself to the evil that is iTunes. This leads to my conclusion that Macintosh may just be the new Microsoft. (At least MS, say what you will for them, works with third party devs and third party hardware without going home to their mommy. You add this to the problems with the new 17" laptops and screens that Apple refused to admit was a problem and that business with rating their own products and not allowing others to do so ... yeah.)
  
• That said, if I can actually get a Linux box to play with without sacrificing my real machine during the learning curve process, I'm tempted to switch that, too.
  
• There is not enough coffee in the world to do this without becoming agitated. Must have more coffee. *vibrates* Yes, I am perfectly aware of the contradiction in this statement.
  

But we now finally have a (hopefully) stop-error free laptop, with freshly updated software and no padded room features. And I found the CDs for the Law and Order game and Monkey Solitare. However, this may have scuttled my plans of getting 25000 words this weekend, as my brain is FRIED and DEAD DEAD DEAD.
*runs away to remake Trillian away messages*