Red's Ramblings v.2

Doing the job I do it irks me to ‘retire’ any computer before its time but thats just what I did this weekend. I’m not sure if its just a Mac thing but I feel a certain sadness at moving on from my old trusty PowerBook G4, more so that I could feel for say my PowerMac. It may be down to the traveling we did together and the adventures we had along the way.

I could give any number of reasons as to why I moved on early. The obvious one is that new things are shiny and Apple to their best to get that magpie behavior out of us but I’d like to think that the real reason is much more justified. Much of my work over the last year has been out of the office and the focus of primary computer had shifted from the PowerMac to the PowerBook. There was still no replacement for sitting in front of my big HD Cinema display but using the PowerBook day in day out was an enjoyable experience.

Over the last few months I’ve come across a number of applications that were Intel only, I’ve also had one eye on Snow Leopard and with the occasional situation where I could have more easily provided support if I has a copy of Windows in front of me the tide was turning and I felt I should consider a new MacBook. Having toyed with the idea I had initially thought that I could go for a bit more portability with a 13.3″ MacBook but I decided I couldn’t live with the screen size and went for a 15″ MacBook Pro which was a direct equivalent of my previous weapon of choice. In hindsight I may have been able to get by with the MacBook as despite its smaller stature it had it in the pixel department. I had never considered this and had failed to check and only noticed when getting a new desktop picture. The new MacBook Pro runs at 1440 x 900 where as the old PowerBook ran at 1280 x 854 which is not too dissimilar to the current MacBook which has a 1280 x 800 native resolution display.

So thats what we have up top. Under the hood is where I opted to have a bit of an upgrade and chose to go with the 2.66GHz model. The reasoning being to give it a bit more longevity and to help out more when I were to have to run a copy of Windows under VM Ware Fusion. The faster processor also came with a bit more memory, topping out at 4GB. I left the standard 5400 rpm HDD as the 7200 rpm would have only given negligible performance enhancements with the stuff I do.

So all thats left is to find a new home for the PowerBook. It shouldn’t be hard and while I was initially a little sad to be moving on its nice that its going to have plenty more adventures with a new owner. It has as I said plenty of life left in it. I just hope that this change doesn’t bring around a premature end to the reign of my PowerMac.

While in the Apple Store I took the opportunity to browse the new batch of FM transmitters. I was looking for something to use in my car as I not really used my iPod/iPhone in a musical capacity for some time. My old car had a tape drive and I used a tape convertor to attach my iPod and regularly listened to my music. Its in my car where I tend to listen to music more than anywhere and I rarely use my iPod with headphones (although I recently bought a set of Bose foldaway headphones). When I changed cars I lost the ability to use the tape convertor as it had a CD player and while I had considered losing the multichanger in preference to a Dension cable I never got round to it. In the end I bought an FM transmitter which did a job but it was never perfect. With the loss of my iPod and the incompatibility of the accessory with the iPhone I was left with nothing again. It was probably a good job that I didn’t go to the trouble of installing the Dension as it may have gone the same way.

So I bought a Griffin Roadtrip and I have to say that it markedly better than the previous devices I’ve used both in performance and usability. Tuning is very easy with a good display on the cradle and the sound is clear ‘most’ of the time. I wouldn’t say it was perfect as you do still occasionally end up in areas where the airwaves are so busy that it has an effect on the sound quality.

With a regular 45 minute commute I think that I can finally start to get my teeth into some regular podcast listening.