Who remembers the couple of years I spent working in central London ? Who remembers the blog posts written on the train, performing character assassination of fellow commuters? They were invariably authored on the white Macbook pictured above. It’s not looking bad for 3 years old, is it.
In reality, little of this Macbook is three years old - during it’s period within warranty, it found itself being repaired more than once, and usually returned with some piece of it’s external casing replaced. Last night, after it had spent several weeks languishing in the bottom of a bag in our study I powered it up, and checked it over. I wouldn’t so much say it was slow, as perhaps volunteer that it was doing a good impersonation of a snail. Given that it had been through two operating system upgrades in it’s life, I made a rather brave decision - to wipe it.
The reasoning went something like this - if I’ve not used it for ages, there can’t be anything on it I need. Re-installing “Snow Leopard” (the Mac operating system) took about an hour last night, and then installing various apps took another hour. I’ve deliberately not installed iLife, and iWork because I’ve realised I don’t use applications much any more; I do everything online if I can.
So what is the Macbook going to get used for? Web development. While hacking away at freelance work at home, I spent far too many hours in the study, locked away from the rest of the house. Particularly in the evening, I end up not seeing my better half for days on end beyond making each other cups of tea. Not fun.
The “little Macbook that could” got another shot in the arm today in the form of a memory upgrade. Since birth it has survived rather admirably on 1 gig of RAM. That just got doubled. I’m not sure it will make a tremendous difference, but it can’t do it any harm. While writing this, it’s sat on the desk next to me, quietly installing software, and reporting 7 hours of battery life remaining. Go suck on that, Windows.