My griping about my sucky laptop is over. Days gone by. For more than two years, one of the bezel hinges was broken, allowing too much play with the lid. When I got up to Chicago for SOBCon last month and opened it up when I got to the conference center, the second hinge broke and destroyed any chance of it saying open on its own. When I took the laptop to our new townhome the morning after closing, I powered it up to see if I could get any wireless signals before the Verizon guy came over. The screen was dead. Dead. Dead. Power, but no visual=useless piece of junk.
We suddenly realized that in two weeks I will be spending 18 hours per week on campus with no way to do any papers or earning freelance money for that time without another laptop. My wife, being the wonderful person she is said I could get a $100 laptop if I needed one that badly. Yes, I laughed at the number (silently) and thanked her for considering getting something done about the situation. I knew there weren’t any for $100 that could run Firefox with a few tabs open, but I was willing to wait to see what was going to come about.
After work, I came home to an e-mail from her that had 4 Craigslist ads for used laptops. One of them is the one I’m using now. It’s a 2002 iBook 700 with a 12.1″ screen, Airport wi-fi card, and an extra battery for emergency power. It’s not the hottest system out there, but it is worlds better than the PC I had and will more than do me until it dies or we start getting some major stuff flowing in from my freelancing, which is far from free, I assure you.
So, right now, I’m sitting in the waiting room (again) at Tampa General Hospital waiting for my quarterly clinic visit running off their wi-fi connection to get some real work done after this post.
Hehe…surely there should be more life to these things!
My current Dell PC is giving me some real concerns over the hard drive & fan. I’ve had it 3 years maybe & it looks like I maybe on the lookout for something too.
Here’s hoping that your ibook can withstand the workload!
Hehe…surely there should be more life to these things!
My current Dell PC is giving me some real concerns over the hard drive & fan. I’ve had it 3 years maybe & it looks like I maybe on the lookout for something too.
Here’s hoping that your ibook can withstand the workload!
Yeah, my old PC had its motherboard replaced twice under warranty and I keep a spare HD around just in case. I looked at the process for changing this iBook’s HD, but it looks like a total tear-down. The guy needs to send me the OS X CD before I’m ready to do that.
Happy Sweet Flag birthday, DM!
Yeah, my old PC had its motherboard replaced twice under warranty and I keep a spare HD around just in case. I looked at the process for changing this iBook’s HD, but it looks like a total tear-down. The guy needs to send me the OS X CD before I’m ready to do that.
Happy Sweet Flag birthday, DM!
So you never gave a definitive answer — how much did you pay for it??
Happy Friday the 13th!
So you never gave a definitive answer — how much did you pay for it??
Happy Friday the 13th!
Technically, nothing. Since I’ve been working with iThemes.com so much, we just kind of said that the money went straight toward the laptop, and then some for all of that work and such.
List price was $330, though. Tomas, if you see this, I know you said you wouldn’t do that, but I had to take your advice with a grain of salt being an enthusiast and not being the one on campus without a computer. 🙂 Saving that much was not an option, so I’ll go all out with my second Mac, buddy.
Technically, nothing. Since I’ve been working with iThemes.com so much, we just kind of said that the money went straight toward the laptop, and then some for all of that work and such.
List price was $330, though. Tomas, if you see this, I know you said you wouldn’t do that, but I had to take your advice with a grain of salt being an enthusiast and not being the one on campus without a computer. 🙂 Saving that much was not an option, so I’ll go all out with my second Mac, buddy.
A few hundred is pretty good for that computer. You’d be surprised how long those older mac notebooks last. good luck with your freelance work.
A few hundred is pretty good for that computer. You’d be surprised how long those older mac notebooks last. good luck with your freelance work.