You just keep me hanging on

[austin_dern]

My primary computer --- holding up pretty well to the challenge of the iPad, mostly because the iPad makes it not quite so convenient to have stuff going in seven windows at once and attention paid to none of them --- is a PowerBook G4, which should tell you something since Apple stopped making PowerBooks around the end of 2005. Come March, it should turn five years old, barring catastrophic failure on some irreplaceable part. I deliberately chose the last of a discontinued line --- this was the last Apple laptop made before the Great Intel Switch --- mostly because I was about due for a new computer then and I figured the first generation of new Mac Intel laptops were likely to be the first generation of a new Mac product.

Anyway, I know that my laptop is showing signs of being ready for retirement. The big one is the hard drive being full up even though I can't point to anything specifically that I can or should throw away (and that with the awkward offloading of my iTunes files onto the Time Capsule as a remote wireless hard drive). In fact, a core dump of Matlab-clone Octave recently filled my hard drive, so I briefly had Zero K free space. I tried to take a screen shot of that, wondering what might happen, but before it could take a picture the laptop cleared out about 200 K of garbage. Too bad, I guess.

Still, I think it's now beginning to demand its retirement. Besides the quirky networking issues where it occasionally decides to not bother with the network (though not so bad as it behaves with bunny_hugger's home network), it's picked up some habits of extended pauses before swinging into action (possibly related to the hard drive's fullness). And the other day I told it to start Firefox, and it happily added Firefox to the Dock without actually, you know, running it. I tried rebooting and it froze up in the middle of that. I know a sullen worker when I see it; I'm one myself plenty of the time.

Trivia: After purchasing the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, Remington Rand had the EMCC division report to Leslie Groves, former general in charge of the Manhattan project. Source: Eniac, Scott McCartney.

Currently Reading: Three New Deals, Wolfgang Schivelbusch.

Comments

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

If you're feeling, well, gutsy, it's not *too* hard to replace the hard drive in an "Aluminum" Powerbook G4. Compared to many PC laptops (which often put the hard disk under an easy-open hatch or in a drawer that pops out if you remove a screw) they're sort of intimidating to take apart enough to get to it, but by Apple standards they're a piece of cake. (The "Titanium" G4s were terrible, as were all the iBooks.) I can just about do it in my sleep now.

If you find yourself considering it they sell these little Swiss-Army-knife-esque USB drive dongles that that are an invaluable tool to assist with the job. (Google for "USB hard disk adapter", or here's an example on Amazon. (http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-CB-ISATAU2-Supports-2-5-Inch-5-25-Inch/dp/tech-data/B000J01I1G) You simply buy the new drive, wire it up to the little dongle, and use Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/) to en-mass shove everything from your old drive onto it. Then you pull out the old, put in the new, and it's like nothing happened other than your hard drive magically growing.

(Granted you may want to consider reinstalling if you think software cruft is causing you problems. In that case the dongle can still be useful. You can install the new drive, slap OS X on it, and then wire up your old drive as if it were your old Mac and use Migration Assistant to pull stuff over... or just copy stuff manually.)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

If it were just the hard drive being full, I think I might make a go at replacing it. I got to be pretty good at swapping the hard drives on my ancient desktops which were less ancient back then, and I have on the iBook and PowerBook done things like installing cards, changing memory, and other little tasks of that order. I'd probably be able to build up the confidence to replacing the hard drive.

But it's not just the hard drive being full. The hardware's showing its age in other little ways: the keyboard not being so responsive (and it's not just me making excuses for bad typing; on a new Bluetooth keyboard I'm sharper and more accurate again), the battery life dropping off a cliff (I never did get around to that replacement), the speakers getting a little raspy, and people are starting to not believe me that I don't even in theory have a web camera. And that it is the last generation of PowerPC chips means I'm excluded from the current version of the operating system, and I'm seeing more software that I want and which I can't run. Many of those are just games --- really, does it matter if I can't play Civilization V yet? --- but some of them are of actual value, such as Matlab or Mathematica, or might be.

It's all little things, much of which could be worked around or accepted with good grace. Or even fought against; I'm sure there's Intel Chip Upgrade Boards available, although I don't know if I'll ever be courageous enough to try that. I may go through the programs to remove cruft, particularly if I hit Zero K awkwardly again.

I think I'd feel better if they still had mouse buttons on the new laptops.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I really think five years is all one ought to expect to get out of a computer. I will probably replace mine after four. After that it starts to get into the territory where it's fun to say 'Hey, look what I'm still running, with 10 percent of its original parts!' (that's where my 7600/120 got to) but not really practical.

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all things considered it's probably time to at least semi-retire the Powerbook. (I figured I'd just toss the idea of a disk replacement out there because, well, it *is* a lot easier than it was in an iBook...) It was a little sad/disappointing how quickly the obsolescence curve of the G4 started ramping up after about 2008, with the last dredges of all PPC support pretty much evaporating last year. :^/

Coincidentally my employer has decided to force-upgrade my laptop this month. (They're on a strict three-year refresh cycle.) So somewhere in the mail between China and my office is a new trackpad-buttonless MacBook Pro with my name on it. To be honest I'm not looking forward to it. (I really wonder sometimes exactly what it is about Apple when it comes to inflicting oddball and marginally functional pointing devices on their users. The iMac hockey puck, that weird buttonless "Mighty Mouse")

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am not going to be able to deal without a button. >:/ At home I've gone back to using my beloved big-old-trackball anyway (it's the only thing that doesn't make my hand and arm start to ache) but at work I still use the trackpad and if it didn't have a button I would be very unhappy. And probably stick a trackball on my desk to use there too.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I love trackballs. Currently rocking a logitech, there's not much market out there for them.. but the one they still make, is good. :)

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I have the Logitech Optical Marble Mouse, hands down the best pointing device I've ever had. Many years ago my first one died, and I just went ahead and bought the newer iteration of it.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I went through a very determined trackball phase, including a while when I had this cute little plug-in trackball which was about one centimeter in diameter. It was cheap, so it didn't roll quite true but it worked and boy if I didn't like it.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

It's just so much less strain and wasted movement than a mouse or even a trackpad that I don't know why everyone doesn't use one. The Marble Mouse has a very large ball and that allows for easy, precise movement with just minor finger motion. It's marvelous.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I've got the Logitech Trackman Wheel Optical. Thumb-rollers I prefer to index-rollers, though admittedly I am right-handed as the entirety of the now-a-niche trackball market seems cater to.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Agh, I can't stand using the trackball with my thumb. Really. At the bookstore they used to have a few computers with that style of trackball, and I would go walk to another desk with another computer rather than try to deal with it. Pointing with my index finger just seems so much more natural to me.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I am saddened to think of retiring this laptop much as it may need it. (Though its current slight difficulty in recognizing presses of the , button is not endearing it to me.)

I was fine with the hockey-puck mouse and while I've never owned that buttonless ``Mighty Mouse'' it seemed natural enough to me when I tried it in the store. Yeah, experimentation will produce hilarious craters as well as soaring airplanes, but it seems to me like the alleged failures aren't a fraction as bad as their reputation makes them out to be.

But I'm still wary of the buttonless track pads.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I don't know, my parents had the hockey puck and I did find it about as bad as everyone said. Dad put a circle of putty epoxy on one side so that he could keep the thing oriented by keeping his thumb on the spot.

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

I didn't personally really dislike the hockey puck, (I received one with the much-abused iMac I inherited from a friend who's arrangement with his wife was essentially "if you want a new gadget one of the old ones has to go") but it definitely suffered from form-over-function-itis. It worked fine once you had it in your hand and were working with it but there was always that moment of fiddling to get it the right direction when starting up.

The Mighty Mouse on the other hand I *hate*. Hate hate hate. One came with the Mac Pro I use at the office, and after less than an hour the thing narrowly avoided ending up in the trash can. It in theory is a somewhat more flexible device than the now-standard "two buttons+clicky wheel" rodent if you're willing to learn how to squash/poke/squeeze/tickle it in just the right ways, but for just the *simple* things like right-clicking the thing was dastardly difficult and unfriendly. I think I still have it in my junk drawer... I tried to give it away but everyone in the office hated them as much as I did.

The pointing device I like that everyone in the world seems to hate is those little eraser-nubbin things in the middle of the keyboard, as found on Thinkpads and a few Dell laptops. They're no good for drawing or anything, granted, but for mousing around menus they're lightning quick and you don't need to move your hands at all to use it. I wish they were an option offered by more manufacturers. (Most of the machines that have them *also* have trackpads and you can switch between them on the fly, which is the best of both worlds.)

I'm still waiting for my buttonless track pad to show up. I'm a little worried since I've received a couple emails which seem to imply they think I should have it by now. Hopefully it hasn't been "requisitioned" by someone else in the building when I wasn't around...

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

My grad-school friend ivanillich really likes the nub and misses it now that his laptop doesn't have it anymore. So you are not alone. I've never used one enough to judge.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I in fact did quite well with the little nubbin thingies on the Thinkpads that I've used or been loaned for one reason or another. (And how is ``nubbin'' in the Official Apple Dictionary'' while ``thingie'' and ``thingies'' are not?) I was even decent in the handful of video games I got to play on the Thinkpads. I remember being a bit surprised that Apple wasn't making use of it, particularly since it lets the keyboard move closer to the front of the keyboard and fight against the tendency to rest your wrists on the laptop front.