Friday 17 October 2008

Leaving The Dark Side

I suspect that my laptop, this one here, which I've had for almost three years, is not very well. It's jam-packed with junk, data, and probably some malware. Nothing that a good ole reformat wouldn't fix, but I'm not prepared to do that.

MamaDuck, who ocassionally uses this heap of poo, has suggested that I should think about replacing it. So, I thought about it yesterday. And what I thought was, 'I'll leave the Dark Side. I want a Mac.

Meaning, I am sick and tired of PCs that don't work properly, I'm sick unto death of Micro$oft. I will get me a MacBook. This is not an easy decision for me: I've used PCs for over 20 years, and all my software is for PCs. But MacBooks have Intel chips in 'em now, and they can run Windoze and Windoze software.

I had the pleasure of using a MacBook for half a day when I was in England in August, and I was really impressed. My friend who owned it said he bought it on Ebay.

I'm not really clued up about Ebay - it didn't really work in Dubai, and I think it barely works in Spain. So I had a look on Ebay.co.uk, and found a machine that I was interested in. And then I tried to sign up. Of course when I put my country in, it sent me to Ebay.es, all in Spanish, and only offering goods for sale in Spain. Poo.

Not to worry, got in touch with my baby in the UK, and he can handle it from there. I have to say, he's an expert Ebay user - he even buys baked beans and cheese there.

So this ultra-high-spec MacBook was going for about 360 quid, but the auction finished about an hour ago. I was prepared to go to 550, but we weren't going to bid until the last minute. In the last hour, my potential bid was bust. It had already gone up to 600. In the end it went for 720.

No matter, I've found a couple more. One auction expires tomorrow afternoon. I'll keep you posted about how we get on.

UPDATE: 22nd October. Got one yesterday. Having watched 3 auctions, I realised that my bid for the spec I wanted was too low. Finally bagged it for 721 squid. More than I wanted to pay, but not at all bad considering it's only a month old, and about 3 times faster than my current lappy. Also has 2 gigs of RAM.

10 comments:

Em said...

apples rock!

Dubai Sunshine said...

Macs are amazing...I became a Mac user last year and it was the best decision ever!

Now if only I could get a Mac at work instead of my crappy IBM, I'd be ecstatic!!

Troy said...

I've bought several things on Spanish Ebay, if you can manage the language it works just fine.

nzm said...

J's went to the dark side last year with a Powerbook. She loves it except for the crappy battery life and the intermittent overheating problem.

She runs Windows as it's important for her SharePoint development work.

Keef said...

NZM: I guess batteries die, eventually. But I was well impressed when I used a friend's MacBook in England in August. I used it for 5 hours: on battery, and online via WiFi, and it was just sensational. And now that Macs have Intel chips, the software thing is no longer an issue: you can run your old stuff under Windows on the Mac. Brilliant!

The Last Ephor said...

Keep the laptop and install Ubuntu. You'll be happier. Need to run windoze? Install WINE and you're good to go.

Linux...the real dark side.

Keef said...

Duffy: You are insane. I want EASY, not Linux!

nowpost said...

Good choice - you won't regret. I went MacBook recently and I'll never look back. It never crashes, it makes everything so straighforward, everything looks good and you can run Windows in either Parllels (means you can have both running at same time) or with Boot Camp (you'll need a Windows installation CD though for both). 2GB of RAM is plenty and you can upgrade cheaply yourself. 720 squid though is about what you have paid for one new in the shops though surely in the UK. I saw the basic model with 1GB of RAM for 699 in PC World in the Uk. Enjoy!

Keef said...

Nick, yeah, it was a bit pricey, but it's only a month old, 2.4 MHz chip, 2Gb RAM, 160GB hard disk, and a whole bunch of software has accidentally been left on it! I'm hoping it will arrive tomorrow.

Cody's Cuentos said...

Welcome to the Mac family, brother! Once you use Mac you will never go back!