Computer woes
So I need a new laptop. I dropped my old G4 iBook and managed to break both USB ports, yay. Sooo..
- Non-functional USB ports.
- It’s 4 years old. Old computer is ooooold.
- Non-Intel, and that’s going to limit a lot of things I do from here on out. Fewer and fewer programmers will bother making things for PPC – kind of like after OSX came out.
- The wireless card is buggered – I have to be in the same room as the base station, if not only several meters away.
- The fan makes this horrible grinding noise that doesn’t sound healthy at all.
- A 1.07Ghz single core processor is far below spec for doing anything these days.
- The graphics card makes me cry (System Profiler tells me VRAM (Total): 32 MB). Running anime raws is iffy. Playing DVDs: iffy. Using Dashboard: sometimes iffy. Scrolling quickly/changing between windows/Expose: also iffy at times. Playing solitaire- You get the picture.
- On a related note: 1024×768 resolution. Not cool.
- 30GB of hard drive space. I have an external hard drive, but I can’t use that now due to the USB ports dying.
- Battery down to 57% life, and 306 cycles. Apparently a lithium ion battery has a life of around 300-500 cycles.
- The only audio in is the internal microphone, which means I need to use a USB headset. See item 1 of the list.
- It doesn’t meet the minimum standards required for Mac OSX Leopard, and I figure I might as well get a new laptop with it included in the price rather than pay for it.
Basically the only saving grace is that I have 1.25GB of RAM installed (that’s the maximum it takes. It started off with 256MB of RAM, which is pitiful indeed), which is stopping it from failing completely when trying to do things. That being said, it’s served me faithfully and well these past 4 years constantly.
So I’m thinking one of those new 2.4GHz 13 inch Macbooks. In white, because the black one is just $120 extra for a black finish. I think I’ll get 4GB of RAM installed when I get it, because otherwise I just won’t get around to it (Yay laziness!). Built in Bluetooth will be useful for syncing with my cellphone. Built in iSight will be useful indeed. I guess I’ll make an XP partition too, I dunno maybe Parallels 3 would be worth investing in.
I’ve been looking up refurbished, secondhand, etc options too, but new looks like the best bet, particularly with the Academic discount. Unfortunately, I can’t really afford it, given I’ve just been overseas and all. Luckily, Course Related Costs can help me out there… Oh Student Loans, what would I do without you?