SPRINGFIELD - Say what you want about Fred Contrada, but he knows how to make an exit.

Contrada, the long-time Northampton reporter and columnist for The Republican and Masslive, retired this week after 27 years.

Before he exited the paper for the last time, he took some final shots -- and all of them were directed toward the company-issued laptop computer that had bedeviled his professional existence for the last several years.

In advance of all the hastily written comments accusing Contrada of destroying company property, let's point out that the computer was declared non-essential property, and he was welcome to take it and do with it as he saw fit.

Put simply, the Information Technology department at The Republican, upon inspecting the laptop had come around to the same opinion of it that Contrada had held for years: it was a piece of junk.