WOO HOO!!! Got me a new/used Mac. I couldn’t afford to get one of the new MacPro or even a New Powerbook so I did the next best thing. I found a great used Powerbook. And so far I am in love! Oh it is SOO nice. I love it. Ordered Tiger for yestarday so hopefully I will be able to install that tomorrow on both my wifes powerbook and mine. This is what I got. It was a steal. Really it was, and when it came in the mail today I couldn’t wait to inspect it. So here goes.
15″ 1.25, 80 Gig harddrive, Superdrive, and 512 mb of Ram, Airport Extreme, and the coolest thing for you Mac Geeks, it has the 5400 Rpm upgrade drive. Pretty much loaded aside for Ram. I will order some more Ram soon enough. And the best part was the price. $1099 can you believe it? Lowest price on Ebay.
Anywhoo had to share the good news. You PC poeple may not understand. But getting a new Mac is ALMOST as emotional as buying a new car. I was due for a new computer. It had been almost 7 years since I had bought a new one. And this will probably my last I will get for a while. As the plan is to upgrade my wifes I take the hand me downs. As she is the designer and the one that really needs the latest greatest.
I was talking to one of my buddies yestarday about my situation and his comment was “Dude you used to be MSCE!! Your A+ certified and you work only with Macs now? What happened?!”
Honestly I got sick and tired of constantly loading, unloading, reloading, uninstalling drivers, apps, software, and hardware. I got tired of comming to my PC and finding I was envaded with a minimum of 10 virus in any given two hour period. I was tired of all the flipping POP-ups that once you finally get them all closed you figure out that one of them closed the site you were trying to get to anyways, because you closed it out so it had to give ten more pop-up to make sure you wanted to close the original 10 pop-ups!! ARGGG!!!! And why? Why do we suffer from that? To sell more software to block the pop-ups and spams. Money and Greed!!!
Dont believe me that business would actually do that? Go get your bottle of hand lotion…go on get it. Now read the ingredients on the back….I will wait…do you see an ingredient called Cetearyl Alcohol? Typically its the second to fifth ingredient listed. Its alcohol what does alcohol do? It dries your skin, if you drink it you get dehydrated. Its takes moisture away!!!! They put that ingredient in there to create a dependancy for the product so you will keep buying the product. Its normal business practice!!! Create a product then figure out how to keep poeple buying the product over and over agian. THAT!! Is why Apple has never sold as many computers as they could have. You dont have to buy a new one every two years!! Case in point my TI400 is atleast 7 years old. A new screen and it will work another 2-3 years easy!! Sure to keep up on Operating Systems you need to buy one every year or so. But that is minimal compared to buying a copy of Windows. In which with windows you still need to buy all the support software to use it. Spam-Blockers, blockers for this, blockers for that, then anti-virus, three to four differant firewalls. Its stupid!!
Other reasons…Mac makes sence. At first when you start using the OS it seems a bit backwards. But if you really think about it, and learn where windows came from, windows is the one that is backwards. Basically to operate a Mac just flip everything around. And you can do it. The file system is a HUNDRED times more secure than any Windows machine!! To network a mac just turn it on. Really you dont have any confirguration. Just make sure appletalk is on and your running. Now you through a PC in the mix and things get a bit hairy. Not MAC’s fault. Purely windows. But overall its not that bad.
I tell you the thought of having another Windows machine just does not thrill me at all. I look forward to the day, when I can shut my Desktop down and never have to use a Windows machine agian.
So here you go two days worth of worthless dribble. I gotta find some pictures to put on this blog. Poeple like pictures.
Okay so I am the worst blogger on the planet. One post a month…Terrible I know. Sorry I just haven’t really thought about writing. I have been so busy with school and working on the house I just haven’t really had any time. Also combined with both of my computers only working part time.
But anyways. What has been new for this month. Not much really. I have been concentrating on school and my house so much I haven’t had much time to really do or keep up with anything. I guess about the only thing of recent study has been computers. As both my 15″ Ti400 powerbook and my PC desktop are on the fritz. I have been trying to decide on whether I should purchase another Mac or PC. I love my Mac. And we will always be a predominatly Mac family. Atleast until Mac finally knocks Microsoft off of thier pedastal and takes their rightful place as the #1 and best OS available.
And before you PC poeple start knocking our Macs. We have two Powerbooks. A 400mhz 15″ Powerbook and my wife has a 17 1.67Ghz Powerbook. My Ti400(Titanium 400Mhz) is around 6-7 years old. We bought it used about 4 years ago and then it was several years old. Apple had just switched to the Aluminum Chassis and released the 1ghz model. I have to tell you. According to PC standards this Ti400 I am typing this on right now would be unusable. To slow, out of date and plagued with virus and other sorted windows issues. Much like my PC desktop of late. I built that computer about 5 years ago with at the time was the best of the best equipment you could find. But back to the point my Ti400 has always run better and faster than my desktop I have had no trouble with it at all. Aside for lately. Which I attribute to age only. The case is still in good shape. But the airport card(wireless card, yes when pc’s were just starting to get into wireless, Mac was already there) is starting to go out, my screen has four sometimes six vertical lines on it. Now here is my issue…
With those two issues. I know it just a matter of time before the airport finally quites for good. And I know the Screen has limited amount of time left also. Could be today or could be three months from now. Unfortunatly I need a computer. I cant afford for one to go down. SO! I could replace the screen for about $200 and I get another Airport card for it about $100 or less. Well that is 3-400 dollers. If I am going to do that I am obviously making the commitment with this machine for another few years. Which I know it will be just fine for. Macs are like that. So if I am going to do that. Might as well upgrade to a superdrive from the DVD player, and upgrade to a larger drive. So combined that is about another 3-400 dollers. So I am looking at about $1000 total. Well those of you that know macs knows that they hold their value. I can buy even an older Powerbook Ti1000 for about the same amount maybe a bit more maybe a bit less. But all in all about the same. Well that would give me 2.5 times more computing power with the superdrive, more ram, and larger harddrive. Trouble is finding a decent one that hasn’t been abused. While the shell is Titanium I have still seen some pretty f-ed up machines. Or I could get a new ibook 14″ which I am not completley thrilled about because I like the wider screens of the powerbooks. Or buy a dell. or PC of other make.
Now my issue with that is that since my wife and are buying a Signs by Tommorrow this summer. They use nothing but PC’s and the shop we are buying is a PC shop. So haveing a PC would be very handy in being able to work from home. Although I could use Virtual PC for the Mac to run my PC programs. And there are some pretty nice PC’s for about $1000 to be had. But I am a emotional Mac fan. I love my mac and really want nothing else. And yes I am dissappointed in Macs move to Intel. However it should show you PC poeple there. Intel is finally catching up to Mac. While Mac has never boasted the processor speeds that intel does. They haven’t needed to. A 1ghz mac is like a 2ghz PC.
So I guess my issue. Buy a “New” PC or a “Used” mac. Both emotional. But no money for either. Hmmm