Another Pink World

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July 23, 2004

kickin' it old school

i didn't hear back from the apple store today, so i decided to take the time to get the mail client on my tangerine ibook updated with my email from the last several days-- the stuff that's still on the mail server.

it was something like 1600 messages, almost all of which were spam. it took a couple of hours to download and sort it all, but now i can use email in a semi-normal environment, and that's totally worth it. email is, i have to admit, a big comfort thing for me. i can and will go for long periods without it when the situation warrants-- usually while travelling-- and it's not too distressing, but when i'm home, it's such a deeply engrained habit to be constantly checking mail that i feel very wrong and kind of upset without it.

anyway, i must state again just how awesome my little tangerine ibook is. i'm so glad i never got rid of it. a co-worker offered today to buy it from me, and she's not the only person who has expressed an interest. but i think i will hang on to this sturdy, adorable little machine for a good while longer. in fact, i'm thinking squishy will find a home inside 9 Westy. a good, sturdy, compact, and good-looking computer will be appropriate inside my sturdy, compact (and hopefully one day good-looking) van.

i think i will take this opportunity now to introduce you to each of my macs. i'm not saying that macs are a substitute for children, but they all cost me money, bring me great joy and consternation, and i have named them all (well-- almost all). so in a really sad, hollow sort of way, it's similar :)

first, i do have two very old macs that have not been named (that i can recall). One is a Mac Plus with no internal hard drive, but a 20mb external hard drive that's about the size of a small cat, and sounds like a jet engine. This was the first computer I ever bought. I bought it used and was pretty much completely ripped off. I also have a Mac SE with the original canvas carrying bag. It was free. Not a ripoff.

next oldest is my tangerine iBook, squishy. this was the first iBook model ever made. it was difficult to get at the time that i got it-- TenPlus systems in Raleigh had a customer refuse delivery on it so they sold it to me. I loved this thing more than I can tell you. I used to make people hug it when they were feeling upset, because it really does make you feel better. It's rounded and rubberized, and as christa can attest, virtually indestructible. one of the best form factors for laptops ever invented. owning a laptop revolutionized my computing life.

i replaced squishy with a white 14" iBook (an "icebook") called icemaiden. this machine enabled me to switch to firewire web cams, which made a huge difference in picture quality and size. it also allowed me to switch to OSX, which was reputed not to be compatible with the tangerine iBooks. icemaiden now has a completely dead hard drive, probably due to exposure to large magnets. i bought this new. one day dave and i walked into the apple store and asked the guys to bring us one powerbook and one ibook. the store was pretty new and they were pretty excited to be selling two laptops at once.

late last year, someone at work was selling a cube, and i decided to go for it. cubes are kind of special. actually, they're very special. i bought it as much as a collector's item as because it's a nice, compact desktop that runs OSX and that i can hang a printer and scanner off of. it's very buck rogers in the 25th century-- all lucite and glowing blue lights. right now it has a dead cd-rom drive. it's named foxy box.

this year i decided that i really, really, really wanted a lot more screen real estate. i have done some good design work on small screens, but it's painful. literally. the more i have to move windows around using the trackpad, the more my pre-carpal-tunnel symptoms flare up. so i bought a refurbished 17" powerbook and named it spacecase. that's the computer currently in the shop. my sore wrists never really flared up during the roswell development cycle this year and i have to say that i just love that computer to death. it rocks my world.

i have also had, and sold: a dual g4 tower; a powercomputing powertower pro (a "clone"-- one of the very few macs that were not made by apple); and a pismo-- the first firewire laptop apple ever made. the pismo and the tower were for doing video editing... the power tower was the first really beefy, modern computer i ever bought, and i designed my first web site on it-- the still existing wxdu site.

anyone who made it this far definitely gets a cookie :)

Posted by lisa at July 23, 2004 11:26 PM | TrackBack

Comments

chocolate chip, please! :-)

i have to say, as much as i love my new G4 ibook, i would love to take its innards and plop them into my blueberry ibook. the design of that old machine is damn close to perfect.

Posted by: christa on July 24, 2004 12:27 AM

My first Mac was a Power Computing clone, and it was a great machine. I am drooling about your Cube...I've always wanted to see one. We have 5 Macs and I think it's time we name them!

Snickerdoodle please! :-)

Posted by: minty on July 24, 2004 07:27 AM

while it can't keep up with the iceBook in power or speed, there's definite a design charm to the oldskool iBook that's been tossed over for a more... i dunno... severe or rigorous beauty.
or sumthin sumthin. it's early. i need some coffee. or an espresso chocolate chip cookie

Posted by: georg on July 24, 2004 08:37 AM

how about a chewy chocolate chip or a oatmeal raisin? :)

my first mac was an icebook, so I really can't comment on the ultimate coolness of the original ibook. of course, the only mac poster i currently have is the Macworld '99 poster of the blueberry ibook! :)

Posted by: Dan LaMee on July 24, 2004 09:57 AM

let's see that's 2 chocolate chip, one snickerdoodle, and one espresso chocolate chip.

dang, you people read too much...

Posted by: lisa on July 24, 2004 11:21 AM

one of my first jobs out of college was bookkeeping using a Mac Classic. And I also worked on a power computing clone (which I think I still have somewhere). I'm not even going to ask for a cookie cause you knew I'd read every word about your Macs :)

Posted by: Sarah on July 25, 2004 10:33 PM

You win the prize on MOST macs owned by a single person!

While I have a few vintage desktops still kicking around, I'm glad that all your laptops are new and you didn't pay $6000 for a PPC 603e Mac laptop like I did in ooohh...1995. This was the computer that made me realize buying computers was a bad idea.

Oh man - I'd buy a cube if I could find one though. Mmmmm....no fan.

Posted by: Mr. Pinky on July 27, 2004 01:15 AM

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