arik.org

POSTING FROM DALLAS -- So I get to Dallas and my PowerBook conks out. Bad. I start combing the Yellow Pages for someone to help.

This has happened before. During my Jan. 2004 trip to San Francisco, the original hard drive on this same PowerBook decided it was only going to show up for work when it wanted to, not when I wanted it to. So I scrambled around and ultimately used my connections at Apple Computer to score a loaner machine for the duration of the trip, which was all of a few days.

Not so lucky this time. I get into the hotel room around 4:45 p.m. and realize that the machine is acting up again. When it does start up it freezes after a few minutes. Upon restart it might emit a few strange and frightening electronic tones, but not start up. This was not what I needed on a trip during which I need to write. So I call the only Mac repair shop with a display ad in the Yellow Pages. I get its proprietor on the phone,and she says she has already closed up the shop for the day. But she suggests that I take the machine to the Dallas Apple Store on Knox Street.

Of course when I get it there none of the problems I experienced take place. Adding to the embarassment, all checks by the tech's diagnostic tools show that the machine is in good health. Well even after all this, I decided that I can't risk having an unreliable laptop any long. It gave me problems in San Francisco, which I thought I had fixed by replacing the hard drive. Its battery had aged to a point where it was holding only an hour's worth of charge at a time, so I replaced that. And during the Vegas trip earlier this year it started to act up by freezing up while I was working, which is rare for a Mac running OS X.

As it happens, Apple announced new upgrades to its PowerBook lines just this week. I had already resolved to get a new one, but hadn't really decided when to do it. Today's problems forced me into action. I am now the proud owner of a brand-spanking new 15-inch PowerBook G4, with a 1.67 GHz PowerPC processor, a SuperDrive, 80-gigabyte hard drive, 512-megabytes of DDR SDRAM. And get this, when the ambient light starts to darken, the keyboard lights up.

Posted 2/01/2005 10:18:00 PM

Fly to Dallas, Buy A Computer