Because one of our children needs a new computer, I’ve ordered a brand new 15″ MacBook Pro … for myself. Our child will get my current MacBook 13″. Don’t look at me like that! I’m more of a power user than our child is. And I’m older. Also, I’m paying for it. But mainly it’s a totally rational decision that happens to work out in my favor.

I know that setting up the new Mac will be simple. I’ll plug my old one into the new one (I’m getting a firewire cable that’s 400 on one and 800 on the other, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll connect through the ethernet ports) and the new Mac will suck the life force (= my user directories ‘n’ stuff) out of the old one.

What will really take some time is rebuilding my Bootcamp Windows XP partition: Reinstall XP, and reinstall the few apps I use. (I am still using Microsoft Money, waiting for the new version of Quicken for the Mac, which keeps getting postponed.) I’d much rather clone the old Bootcamp partition onto the new machine. So, I looked around and found Bart PE and YouTube instructions for burning a Bart PE boot disk. I believe I now have to make a disk image of my current Windows partition, save it onto a USB hard drive, and then, well, I don’t exactly know, but I’ll figure it out. Maybe.

[Tags: macbook mac windows os_x clone bootcamp ]

5 Comments »

For those who are keeping track (= me), the new new motherboard on my MacBook has not prevented the same old problems from recurring. I still am getting random app crashes, most well-behaved by an occasional crash to blue. (Actually, only Keynote crashes to blue.)

I’m feeling pretty certain that we’ve eliminated the mobo as the source of the problem. Since these same problems have occurred in two separate operating systems, including through a clean install of the second one, I don’t think it’s an OS thing. Since they’ve persisted through the creation of a clean user account, I don’t think it’s a software thing. Because the RAM has passed repeated testing by me and by the service professionals, I don’t think it’s a RAM problem.

I am therefore taking it personally.

[Tags: macbook apple ]

6 Comments »

When I first heard that Apple had introduced a 3-lbs Mac, technolust heated my blood. But from my very first poking-arounds about it, my tremors of desire have quieted.

On the basis of preliminary reports, it sounds like Apple threw everything overboard in order to achieve a single design ukase: Thou shalt be the thinnest! No CD/DVD player, yet another freakish video out, no ethernet port, a battery that requires a trip to the factory to be replaced (and given that my MacBook battery is failing rapidly after 8 months…), a single USB port, no firewire port, no good way to plug in an external drive (assuming you have a mouse plugged into your USB port), no mic input, yet another unique power supply. Dongle city! And the Mac Air ain’t cheap.

Thinness is an aesthetic criterion, not a utilitarian one. Art triumphs over usefulness yet again, driven by Steve “One Button” Jobs.

Good. I can enjoy my MacBook unruffled by envy. Well, at least not much envy.

[Tags: apple mac macintosh_air mac_air macbook technolust ]

17 Comments »