Hmmm...
Well one alternative you could have is that the Pluto relay was a bit more thoroughly buried than in Mass Effect. As well as having the Prothean repository destroyed by a nearby asteroid impact...By the time they come across a ME dependent tech they will have already have developed along a very different tech tree. Maybe something along honorverse lines. Or a totally different tech tree.
As for replacement laptops I recently (last week) had to replace my laptop (Toshiba L645D) which suffered a pretty terminal motherboard failure (First symptom was windows 7 reporting that a USB device had malfunctioned namely the SD card reader). I managed to hit Staples in D.C. at right moment to get a clearance laptop (Toshiba L875D with Windows 7) for $330 (50% off). Also check some of the shops that sell refurb systems you can find some fairly usable older systems cheap. Two shops that I've used in the past are Geeks.com and pcretro.com which has a bunch of older Dell latitude laptops in the $100-150 range...
--Werehawk--
My mom's brief take on upcoming Guatemalan Elections "In last throes of preelection activities. Much loudspeaker vote pleading."
Well one alternative you could have is that the Pluto relay was a bit more thoroughly buried than in Mass Effect. As well as having the Prothean repository destroyed by a nearby asteroid impact...By the time they come across a ME dependent tech they will have already have developed along a very different tech tree. Maybe something along honorverse lines. Or a totally different tech tree.
As for replacement laptops I recently (last week) had to replace my laptop (Toshiba L645D) which suffered a pretty terminal motherboard failure (First symptom was windows 7 reporting that a USB device had malfunctioned namely the SD card reader). I managed to hit Staples in D.C. at right moment to get a clearance laptop (Toshiba L875D with Windows 7) for $330 (50% off). Also check some of the shops that sell refurb systems you can find some fairly usable older systems cheap. Two shops that I've used in the past are Geeks.com and pcretro.com which has a bunch of older Dell latitude laptops in the $100-150 range...
--Werehawk--
My mom's brief take on upcoming Guatemalan Elections "In last throes of preelection activities. Much loudspeaker vote pleading."