I’ve been enjoying a superb Easter break, spending lots of time with my family, and even getting a few projects taken care of. I knew that going back to the routine of work would be a bit of a chore after such a great week off, but it got topped off yesterday morning. I was putting away some groceries when I poked my head around the corner into my home office yesterday to do a quick e-mail check. The screen was black, and I thought it had gone into power saver mode, so I wiggled the mouse around. No effect. I used the trackpad. No effect. I pulled the plug and pulled out the battery, then restarted the computer. It came up beautifully, except that my screen was still black.
Many words went through my head. I try to keep gratuitous cursing out of this blog (note to self - need to start a new blog for gratuitous cursing), but I’ll summarize my thoughts as “Oh gosh darn. Well, that is a bit of an annoyance now, isn’t it?“
Luckily, if there is a silver lining here, when I hooked up an external monitor everything seemed to be OK. I just got a shiny new 120 GB USB hard drive, and I will be backing up my data tonight! Just in case.
The downside is that I am without a laptop. My wife and I discussed options last night, and a new laptop for me is certainly a possibility. My use of the laptop has definitely changed in the time (three and a half years) that I’ve had it. I’m doing a lot more media production - screencasts, podcasts - now than I use to, and I’d really like to be doing some video editing as well. Of course, I’d love a new MacBook Pro from Apple, but having used WinXP for the last three and a half years, I’m comfortable working with it, also. And I’m not sure if I really need the Mac, or if I want it enough to make up for the price difference with something like the Dell Inspiron 6400.
Any thoughts, rants, advice or guidance? Please comment (and Mac fanatics are certainly welcome).
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April 24th, 2006 at 13:15
I feel for you.
From a PC standpoint, I’ve been using an Acer Travelmate 4650 since about February. It’s got a 100GIG harddrive and 1GIG of Ram. It handles all my multimedia well including video editing (I completed my Masters project on it).
The other thing I love is the battery life. With the right settings I can get over 4 hours which is just perfect for your favourite sporting event or better when you wife makes you sit throught “Memoirs of a Geisha”.
*you can delete my first entry I did some weird html stuff.
April 24th, 2006 at 13:46
Yeah, your HTML in there was decidedly funky. Thanks for the recommendation, Dean. Vidoe editing is not currently a big part of my life, but editing the podcasts is and I definitely need something with the processing power to make that happen quickly.
OK - we’ve heard from the PC side. Any Mac fanatics out there who want to convince me that the price difference is worth it? (Garageband ‘06 does look mighty tempting!)
April 24th, 2006 at 18:48
Simply no question on this one, Rob. You’ve got to go with the MacBook Pro. In fact, if you are concerned about being able to still run Windows XP, it is officially supported on the new Intel Macs. Go take a look at Boot Camp from Apple — it allows you to dual boot Mac OS X and Windows XP on the same machine. You have, in essence, two machines for the price of one.
There are also rumors that in the next Mac OS update, you will be able to run WinXP apps natively from with Mac OS X. While I’m not positive that the rumours are true, it can already be done with a $40 shareware app (forget the name right now…).
Something to chew on, anyway…
April 25th, 2006 at 12:10
Hey Rob!
I’ve quietly sat back and read you blog for quite some time, not really offering any comments, but I couldn’t let this one go.
A Dell, Rob? I’m going to assume that was sarcasm on your part, because I know you are better than that.
Although my Mac-fanatic husband, Chris, would be happy to tell you all the pro’s of a Macbook pro (starting with how cool they are), I have to agree with Dean.
I have just recently (about 2 months ago) purchase an Acer Travelmate 4650. This was to replace my sad emachine m5310 that was not able to run outlook, dreamweaver, and the old photoshop 7 at the same time. Going to the Acer is like night and day. And Dean’s right… the battery life is awesome.
I purchased my from Computer Works in NB for about $1500, however I have seen some refurbished ones online for as low as $1200.
Good luck!
April 25th, 2006 at 13:55
Thanks Beth.
Yeah, I was serious about the Dell. The tech’s in central office have a couple and they are very happy with them. I know Chris would proselytize about the MacBook Pro, but he doesn’t have to - Boot Camp and GarageBand make the Mac option very appealing. But I don’t know if it is $600 more appealing than other options. I’ll definitely look at the specs on the Acer - I used one a few years ago when I was working out of central office, and I found it was a really good machine, and that Acer’s customer support was terrific!
You’re reading my blog? Does that mean I have to be careful what I write?
May 16th, 2006 at 11:28
[…] I mentioned a while ago that the monitor on my laptop had given up on me. I’m thinking now that perhaps the screen failure was a timely occurence, rather than a complete inconvenience. Apple released my next computer today. […]