Unpacking the new laptop, and setup

Buying from John Lewis has its advantages, even if the price is in the higher range. They have a well-known reputation to maintain, and (in my own past experience) a good track record: I have been buying things from them for a long time with no problems. They offer a proper two-year guarantee that I have faith in (and of course, there are my statutory consumer rights on top of, or instead of, that). 

One thing I really like is that I can go and collect the goods personally from the nearest John Lewis store, or from the nearest Waitrose (which in my case is a short drive away). Collection in person means that I can do it at my convenience, when it suits me, and I don't have to wait in for a delivery at home (usually a prolonged and frustrating waste of my time, as I have to remain inside the house, waiting for the doorbell, doing nothing that would prevent me hearing the said doorbell, or reaching the door quickly). 

As usual, John Lewis dealt with my order very quickly. I ordered it online late on Saturday afternoon, and was able to collect mid-afternoon next day, on Sunday. I don't think it would have been, in practice, any faster using Amazon (and my experiences with Amazon haven't been universally good). And definitely not faster if buying from eBay (plus the risk of issues with the seller). The John Lewis way was smooth and fuss-free.

All I had to do was wait for their email (and text) confirming that the laptop was at Waitrose and that I could come and get it. They had already said I would be able to collect 'from 3.00pm'. Confirmation came at 2.33pm. Yes!

I was stuck into something, and decided to finish it first. Surely that shows character! What, not immediately rushing off to pick up a spanking new and powerful laptop, one of 2025's very finest? No: let restraint be my watchword. No reason to get excited. So I coolly completed the task in hand and only then got ready to collect. As a concession to the importance of the moment, I put on a brand-new orange leather jacket I'd bought while on holiday. I couldn't quite keep the delicious anticipation from my face...

As you can see, it was a sunny afternoon - a good omen!

Collection went well, and in no time at all a cardboard box swathed in a reusable plastic sleeve was resting on the passenger seat of my car Sophie. 

All photos courtesy of my old but faithful Leica D-Lux 4, except that one in the car, which was taken with my phone. As ever, click on these pictures to get a better look.

Once home, I had the exquisite pleasure of carefully wielding scissors and penknife (like a brain surgeon) to cut or slit open various seals to reveal the beast within. This was an historic moment. I'd last done this in 2016, when releasing my previous laptop Verity from her bonds. I used the same penknife, a venerable-but-constantly-useful Victorinox Pocket Pal that I originally bought to peel oranges with in 1994, and still going strong. I recorded each stage with the little Leica D-Lux 4, no stranger to these unpacking ceremonies. 

A sequence of shots will tell the story.

That's the power cable, and the brick that converts the mains electricity to the current used by the laptop. The laptop itself was inside an inner box, sheathed in plastic. I gave it a touch. Soon we would meet in the flesh!

This is a top 'creator laptop' - hence the language used by Asus. And indeed it explains the overall style, quality and sheer power of the thing. And its 'ProArt' name. 

Even if you think the nomenclature is a bit pretentious, there's no denying this laptop has style, clean-cut lines, and is surely quite beautiful in a dark kind of way. Typical, I'd say, of mean machines for gaming and professional artwork. That was what I was buying into.

Well, we meet at last! The exterior has a special matt coating to resist smear marks and scratches. The underside was largely given over to louvres covering big fans to suck cool air in and expel hot air, on those occasions when the ProArt would be working hard.  

Let's lift up the lid to reveal the screen, keyboard and touchpad. More stickers to peel off.

By now it was late afternoon. Time to plug it in, set it up, personalise it, and maybe even use it normally before the end of the day!

The sixteen-inch touchscreen was appreciably larger than the thirteen-inch screen on Verity, my previous laptop. It was just as reflective. Some prefer matt screens, to avoid reflections, but I like glossy screens as they are more brilliant - important for photography. (They make good mirrors, too) In practice this meant text would be larger and therefore easier for my eyes to see. Also, if I ever wanted to watch TV or YouTube videos - streamed via my tethered phone Olivia - then this larger screen would mean an improved viewing experience.

The keyboard was excellent, with lovely responsive keys and a key layout I quickly adapted to. The touchpad was huge - I'd have very fine control when working on my photos!

Although a bigger machine than Verity, this new laptop looked much the same when I put the two side-by-side. And it fitted into the same old laptop case. This was, as it happens, an Asus case - the one that came with my first laptop, an Asus W3V, way back in 2006. (Despite travelling with me around the world in 2007, and on all my caravan holidays, and being used daily when at home, this case still looked almost new. Remarkable)

Setup went well. The main issue was the very different navigational methods used in Windows 11, compared to what I was used to in Windows 10. I dare say there was some rationale behind it, but initially it felt as if Microsoft had made annoying changes just for the sake of a new look. But I got used to it. And underneath all the changes, there was the same old Windows, just tidied up somewhat. So now, three days after collection, I'm actually doing work on my new laptop with some fluency. Even on that first evening, I still managed to view the blog and could have written and published a post.

It was an impressive device, and felt well worth the £2,799 I'd paid for it. Back in 2016, I'd paid £1,600 for Verity, equivalent to £2,200 in 2025. So this time, nine years later, I was paying somewhat more. But on the other hand, the new laptop's specifications were far better. It was bigger, faster, and had vastly more onboard memory. Altogether, a much better proposition for the years ahead. I was future-proofed.

And what name did I choose for this new machine? 

I stayed with my current habit of adopting a vaguely old-fashioned name. So my new workhorse was christened Constance.  

I have a couple of old programs that won't run on Constance but will on Verity, my old laptop. So unless I set up a way to emulate Windows 10 on Constance, I will need to turn to Verity if - say - I want to do any scanning, or use an old-but-still-useful photo editing program. Verity will in any case now become my spare laptop, usable online until October 2026, but only offline thereafter. 

A new laptop!

It was time. I'd owned Verity, my current laptop - a Microsoft Surface Book - for over nine years. She'd been a premium purchase in her day, and had proved durable, reliable, capable and very pleasant to use. Her main job was to process the many, many thousands of photos I took each year. And to retrieve whatever I wanted to see from my vast Photo Archive. She was still very good at it, but I knew that a modern and much more powerful laptop would speed up all the viewing, editing, organising and backups necessary. However, the main (and unavoidable) reason for replacing her was that she ran on Windows 10, an OS now defunct, and was unable to upgrade to Windows 11. 

She'd had a temporary stay of execution: thankfully, I had qualified for a further year's free security updates from Microsoft. But I would have to replace her with a new Windows 11 laptop by mid-October next year. It would be a major purchase, though long foreseen. 

When should I spend the money? Now or later on? And what to buy? 

First, when. I ran through the considerations. Who knew what might happen to world laptop prices in the months to come? Especially the cost of powerful laptops with the latest components in them. Those prices might well prove volatile. But in any case they would only tend to increase. If I waited, then the kind of machine I'd really need might get beyond my means. Then there was our own Labour government looking for extra tax revenue in the upcoming Budget. I wondered whether the Chancellor might be tempted to increase VAT on 'luxury goods', such as fancy laptops. 

Was I in a position to buy? Could I afford to spend a lot of money in November 2025, or must I wait until later on, until well into 2026? This boiled down to cashflow. I made some detailed forward financial projections, and decided that I wouldn't run into difficulties. True, my savings would dip in December and January, but then they would recover. And there was no other big purchase on the horizon, not in 2026 nor for a long while to come. I'd already replaced my car in 2023 and my phone in 2024. If I replaced my laptop in 2025, I'd then be looking ahead at a long (and hopefully uninterrupted) spell of financial improvement as I built up my savings for a big deposit on my next car, maybe in 2030. Yes: I would go for it.

So what to buy?

I was sticking with Microsoft, and not migrating to Apple. Another Windows laptop then. 

Verity had been a 2-in-1 laptop, meaning that she had a detachable screen that could be used independently as a kind of tablet, or just left attached like a regular laptop. But I had never detached her screen for tablet use. It wasn't a feature I needed, and next time around I'd do without. However, I definitely wanted a larger screen. Verity's had been a 13 inch. 15 or 16 inches would be better, now that my laptop was my only way of viewing TV programmes. Besides, reading small text would be easier on a larger screen. A larger screen meant a larger and heavier machine, but it would still be portable. I would be doing no more than carrying it between the lounge and the study in my house, and between caravan and car when on holiday. As before, I needed an OLED screen, a powerful processor, and a proper graphics card for my daily photo work - the best I could afford. I'd also need a good selection of ports for attaching my external SSDs and other things, and a very good keyboard and trackpad. A touch screen too. All those things in a tough, quality chassis.  

The major online review websites seemed in agreement as to which high-end 2025 Windows models would be right for my needs. There weren't more than two or three to mull over. One in particular drew me. It was on the expensive side, but really no more than I'd reckoned I'd have to pay in the end. But it was by no means a no-brainer. It was absolutely necessary to study the specifications with close attention. I read (and re-read) what the reviewers said: there were nuances to understand. Exactly how enthusiastic had they really been? What had excited them? What had turned them off? 

This had to be a laptop that was not only entirely up-to-date and super-capable for 2025, but would remain so for years to come. I'd kept my first laptop (an Asus W3V) for ten years. Verity for nearly as long. This one would also be a long-term investment. I might not buy another until 2034 or 2035, when I'd be over eighty! (Gulp)

My final choice: the Asus ProArt P16, the latest 2025 version with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card. Here are the links to the reviews on TechRadar (https://www.techradar.com/computing/asus-proart-p16-h7606-2025-review) and Digital Camera World (https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/tech/laptops/asus-proart-p16-2025-review). I bought it a few hours ago from John Lewis online. They wanted £2,799, which is not exactly a bargain price. On the other hand, they are a gold-standard trusted retailer from my point of view, and part of that price is for a proper two-year guarantee. I also get next-day collect-from-store convenience (i.e. I will simply pop into Waitrose in nearby Burgess Hill and take it away). I'll be unboxing it tomorrow afternoon.    

And what to call the new laptop? It has to have a name. I have a shortlist. It includes names like Constance, Patience, Lydia and Martha. I tend to go for old-fashioned-sounding names for my tech equipment. Well, the right name will occur to me at the ritual unboxing. I'm sure there will be a post all about that! 

Rackwick

One of the posts on my list of posts not hitherto written is one about my visit to Rackwick on the mountainous island of Hoy, the second-largest in the Orkney archipelago. On the way there, I checked out the Dwarfie Stane, which I have already written about - see my post The Dwarfie Stane on 30th June 2025. But Rackwick was my prime destination in the northern half of the island. Here are two location maps:

Click on these to enlarge them, Same with the photos that follow. 

I was pitched at Stromness (upper left in the top map), and had to drive to Houton on the A964 to catch the ferry to Lyness on Hoy. I arrived in the late morning, and had about six hours to see whatever I could. But first stop had to be Emily's, a roadside café, for an early lunch. This was the card I picked up:

And this was how it was on the day. It was sunny and mild: warmer than you'd expect for a Far North shoreline spot in springtime. Even so, I sat inside. 

I beat whatever off-the-ferry rush there might have been, and was able to chat a bit with Emily herself, in between her cooking. I chose something heartwarming, sustaining, and very yummy. 

Orkney is a foody place (be warned) and although Hoy might seem a bit off the beaten track (it isn't really) you cannot go hungry, wherever you may stray. That lot was delicious, but very filling. However, I had some walking in mind to reach the Dwarfie Stane, and then at Rackwick, so I was confident of burning off some of those calories!

In the loo were some Second World War helmets, begging to be tried on. I couldn't resist.

Now who can hold a somewhat heavy Leica X Vario in one hand, and take a picture, while applying lipstick with the other? I can!

That's the very camera whose shutter failed later the same day, and was eventually repaired. I just managed to photograph what I wanted to on Hoy before the thing became inoperative.  

On to Rackwick. Now this really is a remote place. There is one narrow road in, and you absolutely need your own transport. The nearest proper shop is twenty miles away, at Longhope far down in the south of Hoy. So a forty-mile round trip. But then everyone living at Rackwick values the hideaway atmosphere of the place. The resident population is scattered about in little houses, some of them with turf or flat stones on the roofs, so that the winter storms can't blow them off. The place is much visited by adventurous walkers, school parties, and climbers wanting to scale the old Man of Hoy, reachable by a three-mile slog through the heather. (I didn't attempt it, not even for the stunning pictures I'd have got from the cliffs)

So here's the road approach to Rackwick. It's all brown or grey hillside until a broad patch of green comes into view, where the houses are.

The car park was surprisingly full. But apart from an obvious field study group of students, and one or two casual tourists like me, Rackwick seemed deserted. Excellent. I wanted a solitary communion with the bay. I sat in Sophie for a few minutes, to drink it all in. I'd wanted to come here for years; decades.

Time to walk. No jacket needed. Just the red hat. The shore beckoned. I set off down a track, passing a couple of low stone buildings, reminders of a time - long gone - when there was a working community here, and not just seasonal visitors and the odd resident with sufficient other income.

I was surprised that there wasn't more sand visible. All I could see were large pebbles. This was a calm day, but it struck me that the shore must be a very noisy place when heavy waves crash down on those pebbles and suck them this way and that. 

For now it was very peaceful. If I'd had the time to spare, I would have sat down and just let the sun and the peace sink into me. Many people have said this is a special spot, a spiritual place, a place for healing. Well, I needed no healing, and I wasn't spiritual, but nevertheless I did feel that here you could forgot all worries. It was so serene. I found myself getting very thoughtful.

I had planned a triangular route: car park to the south-east end of the bay; then along the beach to the north-west end; then back through the cottages to the car park. Because of the large and unstable pebbles, it was clearly best to avoid the beach and instead follow a path that kept to the turf above. It had the advantage of a double view: sea and cliffs to my left, and the Rackwick valley to my right.

Rackwick's most famous modern resident was Peter Maxwell Davies the composer - here's a piece about him from the NorthLink Ferries magazine:

He lived in one of the small cottages up on the hillside - ideal for a composer who needed to pound on the piano keyboard without disturbing his neighbours! In or near the car park was a board showing the location of each habitable house, there being no road names here:

I wondered which cottage? Had it been the one called Crowsnest? I still don't know. Here's a link to an expanded NorthLink Ferries article on his life in Orkney (on Hoy and on Sanday, another island to the north, where he died): https://www.northlinkferries.co.uk/orkney-blog/sir-peter-maxwell-davies-in-orkney/. 

Next, the walk back to the car park, using a tarred road no less, and passing houses that showed signs of modernity, and civilised living, and were not just tumbledown stone dwellings. But first a look back at the bay. Would I ever see it again?

I hope you can see the magic of Orkney, at least as I apprehend it. Hoy is the only mountainous island in the archipelago. It's the one with the best scenery. But some of the other islands have small hills, lochs and impressive cliffs too. Plus a castle or two, or a pretty fishing village. I couldn't get to them, although some were visible offshore from the Orkney Mainland. Each would need a ferry crossing and a day for exploration, and I didn't have the time in only a week's visit. I'll have to go back.