My Acer Netbook (Snookums)

...I preferred (and indeed somewhat missed) the McAffee program. Still , I am glad that I have not only refrained from referring to CA as "the currently installed dictator" but that also, when CA sends up a popup telling me what it's protected me from thusfar (mostly 'inbound connections' and adware) I say "Thank you," quite politely.

Well, CA has come to the netbook's rescue on two recent occasions. Once I got a message of some threat that appeared to come from Windows, and foolishly clicked; immediately it was obvious that I had entered some other website that was merely masquerading as a Windows window. CA sent up a message about a virus-infected file; apparently it dealt with the file quite adequately (zapped it? cleaned it?) on contact.

It was then that I threw in the "dear". "Thank you, dear," I say when it sends up one of those boxes to numerate the various things it's blocked or otherwise dealt with, and remind me that it's protecting my computer.

Then came the second incident. Apparently there was a third-party module on Squidoo that was briefly compromised/set to download contaminants. CA dealt with that smoothly as well. Well, hmmm, there are only so many ways one can express gratitude to a security program. I'm already calling it "dear"; I'm not about to upgrade it to "Snookums". (I reserve that term for the netbook itself.)

I actually find the petite keyboard on a netbook easier to use than the standard kind of computer keyboard. One does have to be careful, though, with a touchpad -- it's easier to accidentally 'click' on something when you don't intend to. It's really easy in fact to accidentally flag a Blogger blog while moving your cursor. I've been told that hey, it happens, no big deal... Google doesn't bat an eyelash at the occasional flagging. Still, my netbook kind of took it to heart -- having accidentally flagged its own dear blog. (Ssh, Snookums, it was probably my fault.)

I read somewhere that if a netbook quieted down when you picked it up, that it was more likely the noise was coming from the fan than the hard drive. So does that mean netbooks like babies - they seek human contact and hush when you hold them close to your heart? (Or might it have something to do with circulating air?)

Not being particularly pragmatic, I have thought at times of doing a Squidoo lens for this here netbook. It could recommend some products and security programs ('Snookums' recommends) and I could include some blog posts where it appears as the charming character that it is. Am I getting too bonded to this netbook, though? Should I not humanize it so much?

Snookums can hum if it wants to (It's nowhere near as noisy as the noisy netbooks featured on YouTube, by the way) and of course I would much rather have new parts for it than a new netbook, should it come to that. Ah, but netbooks don't last forever. So you know the story of The Velveteen Rabbit? Uh, do you suppose there might be something like a Blue Fairy for netbooks - who scoops them up and says things like, "You have been a loyal Acer Aspire One netbook. Before you were real to Karen. Now you shall be real to everyone!"