In the World

Somewhere around the end of October my trusty little Thinkpad T41p laptop died. It was a hardworking little machine, and never complained when I asked it to work into the wee hours of the morning. It was my faithful companion through thick and thin for more than 3 years.

Then, late one night, just as the hour of the wolf chimed, my trusty IBM Thinkpad blinked, shuddered, and was no more.

So I replaced it. What? It was just a computer.

Now I’m running a 2007-model Macbook, but it just isn’t the same. I miss having a pointing stick. I miss having a keyboard light. I miss the square 14″ screen. I miss having a dock and being able to run my business apps natively.

Not that my MacBook is bad, mind you. It just wasn’t designed with someone like me in mind. There are too many things that I can nitpick. At least Terminal Services works.

I’m horribly selective when it comes to any kind of computer. I can’t buy computers at Circuit City or Best Buy. I’m that geeky guy who knows more about the computers than the people selling them. I’m like the car mechanic shopping for a new car at a dealership: I know what I want, and why I want it. Finding a laptop that covers it all is something else altogether. If only Toshiba would add a pointing stick and a 14″ screen to it’s R500 Portege. Sigh.

I’m just glad that there’s a VirtualBox binary for OSX, and Xcode has given me a bit of entertainment. The fact the my Mac will talk to my Tivo, and that it can now handle Netflix movies also helps make things tolerable. I guess a “yay Silverlight!” is in order for the little victory over flash that Microsoft was able to pull off at Netflix.

Oh well. At least it’s not a pink Vaio.