BlogDale

So I got fed up of the stuttering on the Mac and sent it back to the supplier for a replacement.  Seems they’ve sent me the new 8-core model (mine was 4-core).  Just my luck - being Without a Mac at the very time when I need to do some vital video editing and I Most Need a Mac.  Ah well, the old Ergo Tablet PC will have to struggle yet awhile with Pinnacle and I look forward to the new Mac.  But like my old mate Patrick says - what will I do with 8 cores?  Memo to self - find out how to tell if it actually does have 8 cores.  Multiple Apple Cores.  Ha.

I can’t fault the after-sales service of Apple or Western Computers, replacing my Mac Pro so speedily.  Let’s hope the new one copes with Leopard better.  My scepticism about zealots continues, however; surely the Mac, being proprietary hardware and proprietary software ought ot have run properly whatever the version of the OS? I appreciate that people use Macs for their reliability and usability, God knows my brief (so far) foray into Macdom shows that it is pleasurable to have things so nice to use, yet the breakdown in hardware/software/whatever just made it so much more frustrating.  The higher the expectation, the harder the fall.  I’m not one who gives up easily though and I look forward to the new Mac arriving in less than 24 hours.

But I got a new toy yesterday.   Toy, that’s a laugh.  But it LOOKS like a toy - A5 footprint, tiny screen and weighs next to nothing.  My old filofax (never used it, just carried it) weighed more than this Asus EeePc (used it more than carried it already).  Gave it to the children and within 30 seconds they were playing Tux games and Mr  Potato Head on it.  Not bad for a 4 and a 5 year old - “I found the word Play, Daddy and I just tried it” - things like this make me realise how much I love that boy, and his sister who wrought her vengeance when he tried to “help” her.

Similarly impressed were the Year 10s at school who I lent it to (”hurr, huurr; penguin games sir”) and it provoked a conversation on what a computer actually IS, and are the lines diminishing about what we require/expect from a computer?  We talked about the ins and outs of Macs, PCs and now the Eee PC - emphasis on usability and appropriateness and hey, now things are so cheap we can have one for every occasion, right?  I love these starting points that come from nowhere.

The Asus runs Linux so it was always going to be a fave for me.  Let’s make no bones about it, I Love Linux and wish I had more time to learn to use it in more depth (and that’s all it takes, only time to read the man pages from the open source community and understand them - that might be problematic, when I think about it…).  But even if I didn’t, the box comes with instructions on how to load Win XP (as if) and a quick trawl tells me how to load Ubuntu on it (as opposed to Xandros Linux).  But so what?  It’s just a machine, right, like I’ve said all along?

Nope.  This one’s a link to my family.  Instead of spending hours in the study tied to a desktop I can sit and use this baby on the arm of a chair without fear of the children knocking it off.  Its small size means that it doesn’t dominate the scene nor is it an intrusion into family life (”Can’t you see I’m on the laptop dear?”).  2 days in and I love it for giving me my life back.  (Blogging this from the supper table so not sure it really has done).

More to come on this remarkable device but suffice it to say that when I fold down the clamshell and move back into the Inner Sanctum of the Study I shall hold back my conscience only by the fact that my family is engaged in sleeping - even the labrador (named Blackberry, but more usually called Dog - we’re not good at imagination  here) is snoring.