In which an Apple takes a byte from my wallet....

This is the last article written on my Dell. It’s also the first written from my new computer. Read on....

Pause for a moment of silence. My Dell laptop is dying a slow, painful, heat-related death. Before you ask, it is resting comfortably on a cool-pad. It helps, but only so much, and yes, I have backed up almost all my files. The disc drive itself seems okay. The problem is the motherboard...and I’m afraid its terminal.

In the last month, I’ve had two blue screens of death that I have cheated. The cursor has developed a mind of its own, wandering from one corner to another and requiring me to use both the mouse and the pointer to wrestle control back. Mostly, I reboot it after letting it sit for a few minutes, and it seems okay. The screen pixilates and requires flexing it back and forth (as if I were opening or closing it) to get it to come back. I find it is using 100% of the CPU more often these days.

Two weeks ago, it managed to lose the wireless card. I thought it had shut down for good, having decided to go to wherever good wireless cards go to die.

It is not looking good for the poor thing.

It also means, as of this writing, I am in the market for a new laptop. I’m deciding between another Dell, an HP, or a Mac. You have read that correctly. For the first time ever, I am seriously considering a Macintosh.

Most of you who know me also know I haven’t been a huge fan of Apple. It’s nothing personal, mind you, it’s just that Bill Gates was bright enough to capture some 90% of the market rather easily. Macs (and by default, most Apple products) just were not keeping up. The last time I used a Mac for any length of time was in the early 1990’s, when the company I worked for was thick with them. Survived the transfer from System Six to System Seven. It was big stuff back then. Took two Mac U courses on Word and Excel. Heck—my “Intro to the PC” course at Los Medanos College was based on the Apple IIe. (It might have been an Apple IIc...I’ve slept since then.) One of my temp jobs had me using a Mac for a day. So it’s not like I’ve never worked with Apple products before, or recently.

Even after buying my iPod Touch, I’ve still been a bit leery about the Mac thing. My photographic and musician side has wanted one for years, but the practical side of me—you know, the one the works for a living—has deemed it more prudent to get a Windows-based unit, since that’s what everyone else uses.

The problem is, as leery as I am about a Mac, I’m more wary of Vista, and the soon to replace it Windows 7. Vista is buggy, even after SP1, and Win7 is based off Vista, according to my computer folks who actually do the computer thing for a living. Doesn’t fill me with warm fuzzies, kids.

And since Black Friday is coming, as I write this, now is the time to put the Dell to rest. Mourn not, gentle reader. It’s had a good life, for a Pentium 3 based system.

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Update: After some soul searching, a lot of asking around, and more research than I’ve done for a computer in ten years, I bought...a MacBook. The 13.5” model, aluminum frame, OS X, etc. It’s nice.

It’s not perfect--far from it!--but it is stable, will do what I need it to do (Mostly--I did have to load Windows XP on it), and should still be running four or five years from now.

There’s a learning curve. I’m using Pages from iWork to write this, and it’s a bit different from MS Word, and I may end up replacing the wireless printer router as it doesn’t play at all with Macs. (Since the printer sits right next to me, though, I can load the driver on the Windows side, use it there, and plug in the printer for the Mac side for now.)

My goal, however, is to use the Windows side for work only.

Oddly enough, last night my wireless card on the Dell came back to life, for who knows how long.

Enough for now.

(posted 12/03/08)