Well, after four years, my beige G3 desktop computer has finally given up the ghost. The timing is terrible. We’re going to be paying for our wedding for a few months yet. Also, I’m not sure whether to hang on until Macworld San Francisco in January to hear about new G4 models. For now, I’m chugging along on my two year old iBook. If you’ve emailed me in the past few weeks, and haven’t heard back, it might be because all of my messages (and addresses) are on the dead box. Try me again…
Oh, and Mac folks, any suggestions as to whether I should add to my debt now or wait for bigger and better?
James, if you don’t feel the need to be on the absolute bleeding edge but don’t want to be trailing either, check out the deals at Small Dog Electronics (smalldog.com). They have great prices on warrantied, refurbished equipment, and I’ve always found them a delight to deal with. They even have some refurbed flat-screen iMacs.
If you can afford the server space I’d recommend switching to IMAP mail rather than POP mail. It might force you to be a little more stingy with which messages you keep and which ones you delete — but you can always pull important messages to your own box and delete them from the IMAP server. That way, next time your machine craps out (knock wood) your email won’t be lost.
As far as machines go, lately I’ve taken a step back and started getting machines that get the job done for me — they aren’t top of the line, but by avoiding that I also avoid the trap of wondering when and what Steve Jobs is going to update when. I have an open-box iBook and I just got a 1-year-old TiBook which is plenty of machine for me. If you are getting another desktop, those are even easier to upgrade. And TheBrad is right — Small Dog has great deals. Check them often, and dealmac.com, too.
James, I sent you a couple long emails about this issue. Being your nerdier friend it seems my responsibility to help you and Brooke make the right choice. The new G4s are overkill, unless you can justify throwing away money by saving you the time and aggravation of working out a better solution. Time is money, after all. 🙂
…this is all assuming your hardware has really bitten the dust, of course. Since you *work* at a reseller/service provider, you owe it to yourself and your system to make sure it isn’t some silly thing — like a power unit or memory module or something. Granted, it could be something worse, but I know they will look at it for you for free. Just take it to work! You can *at least* try to last three months and get a dual867 when the price drops.
James, come see me, I can give you a good deal on a mac.
Listen, don’t listen to “brent” and “paul” they are just a bunch of sharks trying to take your monies. Go put together a PC for REAL cheap – I’ll help.
new ibooks and powerbooks in a week or so, plus iMacs are due to be refreshed very soon, so I’d say wait. The rumour, as I’m sure you know, is that the 15″ iMac is being phased out, and a 19″ is being introduced – the fact that Apple dropped the price on all of the 15″ iMacs across the board is a sure sign that bigger and better is just around the corner…