Laptop Issues

LIVING without a laptop for the past three weeks has been hell. Now, I know what some will be thinking, and no, I don't even watch that kind of stuff anyway, and if I did, I'd watch it via my PS3.
I've been forced into using my sister's laptop, and it's not so fun - she's stuck stickes all over, and always wants it because she has a sad obsession with Coronation Street, and Doctor Who.
Three whole weeks looking at a laptop, all because the guy who is looking at it decided it would be a good idea to go and get swine flu - how ignorant!
I can't take it anywhere else because last I heard it was in about twelve pieces, but as a serious (and I use the term lightly) journalist, and one with videos to put together of different things - the Cullompton Town Council will be getting edgy about not seeing their carnival - I need a laptop, and my sister's isn't doing it for me.
If anyone knows anything about computers, and HASN'T got swine flu, or any other mild or terminal illness, can I borrow your laptop?

Mid Devon Gazette - 2006

This is an email sent to me by an 'insider' back when the days of the Mid Devon Gazette were gloomy and the quality of the paper temporarily went downhill because of the cost cutting that was taking place. The email was sent towards the end of February 2006, a lot has happened since then!

"You might know, you might not know or you might have heard a rumour, about the radical changes taking place at the Gazette. People seem to be interested in what is happening with the paper, so maybe this blog will make a few things clearer.

Newspapers across the country are cost-cutting and streamlining their operations, and this is also happening to the Gazette and the four other titles run by Cornwall and Devon Media Ltd. Under the restructure, some of the staff here in Tiverton will be or have been made redundant, with effect from March 30 orthereabouts. From that date or before, other staff will be shifted to new offices in Barnstaple, where all the page production, sport and leisure will be done for both the Gazette and our sister paper the North Devon Journal. A three-person sports team will overlook both papers. A Gazette newsroom will remain in Tiverton but with only three reporters, and none of them will be on sport. The two photographers will stay here along with a couple of advertising staff. There will be no front counter or front office in Tiverton as of Tuesday, February 28, although those staff staying here will remain upstairs in the same building at 29 Bampton Street before, in all likelihood, a smaller office is found in the town. If you have an advertising query after February 28, you are encouraged to use the internet or telephone. If you have an editorial query, e-mail is the preferred route but as far as I understand it you can ring the doorbell just down from the main reception room and somebody will come down to see you. Alternatively you can use the postbox in the same dark blue door to leave reports, stories and photographs, etc. The wholesale changes have been in the pipeline for the past three months and, on a personal level, I am concerned at the shifting of many operations an hour up the road, the threadbare staff and the removal of a front office and town-centre presence. The Gazette remains the best performing of the five Cornwall and Devon Media Ltd papers in terms of readership (they are defying national trends by rising while the others are all about five per cent down), so in that sense it is even more disappointing that they are having to undergo these changes."