(Off-topic): An ode to old computers
Hello, Wdlove! Yes, the Graphite is a great computer and still has a huge potential, but in my case the hardware upgrade is software/application driven; this is a purchase dictated by Apples success in the home entertainment software! You see, the computer comes with a CD/DVD-ROM, and it has an external USB-based CD-RW. While it runs most iLife apps nicely, iDVD is not one of them. Toast does not match the elegance of iDVD, and creating non-DVD home movies the old fashion way (DV cam -> Mac -> iMovie -> DV cam -> VHS) is, well, old fashion! VCDs made with Toast are fun and cheap to make, but still nothing like the DVDs created with iLife. I considered a processor upgrade and installing an internal DVD-R, since apparently iDVD wouldnt run on external units, but I think this is a short-term solution. So, a new computer seems to be the logical answer. I already have in mind a nice home waiting to adopt the Graphite: good computers never die, they just get handed down / donated.
I also have a Beige G3, which I still use daily for Office and other work related apps mostly. The computer is a different beast today than the day it saw life as a 266 MHz PowerMac. Now it has USB/FireWire/ATI Radeon and a G4 brain. Recently and as an experiment when the internal SCSI drive died, I removed the Gig-Ethernet card and installed a SATA card and HD. Ran beautifully to the extent I thought of removing the floppy drive, which is no longer used and install a second SATA drive turning the computer into a central file server. I just love that computer; its keyboard is simply a joy to work on for those long documents. Ill keep on using it until it screeches to the ground, it runs Jaguar although probably I can still hack Panther to run on it. Fancy that it started its life digitizing and editing VHS movies under Strata Video and the classic MacOS. To me, it is a testament to how exceptional the Macintosh computing platform really is, and how resilient Macs are!
(Honest-to-God-true story): I work at a PC dominated environment, but being a Mac-head I insist on using the Macintosh. I used a 333 MHz iMac until last year when I convinced the department to get me a dual 1.25 GHz G4. Along the way, I also inherited an old B/W G3, which I also use. Recently our department assigned new PCs to the staff, and somehow my name was on the list of those eligible for the upgrade. I was surprised one morning when two boxes (Dell PC and LCD) were delivered to my office. I complained that I really have no use or space - for an XP machine, but to no avail. Not knowing what to do with them, I have yet to unpack the boxes, they are sitting beneath my desk (maybe I should post pictures its so sad).
Somewhere, I still have the Rhapsody / Yellow Box developer CDs from the days Apple considered a dual platform strategy after the NeXT acquisition. I also own a decade old version of NeXTstep/x86. While I doubt the computer will run these, I think its tempting to try and carry out the installations once I have enough time to spare for geeky experimentation! I think eventually Ill get a recent version of RedHat Linux installed on the PC.
