17 Feb 2008 1147H

And the winner is

. . .the 2.2GHz Intel Core Duo Macbook, along with a 4GB upgrade via OWC. Why the Macbook? Weren’t we just talking about the iMac? Well, to begin with, it was $200 off, being refurb, and hadn’t had any issues with refurb in the past, not that that is any indicator of future performance, but the other thing was, couldn’t exactly justify the cost, about $600-700 more for the full Macbook Pro, bigger screen, faster video chip, and FW800 and all. The idea of putting up $1700 for the iMac wasn’t so bad, but the problem that’s been sticking in my head for the last week is that, while I really liked the iMac experience — seemed peppier in performance at 2.4GHz, and the 24″ screen was really nice — I’m kind of addicted to ubiquitous computing, instead of sitting down at a particular place and letting that be my work station. Besides, since I have a 20″ widescreen monitor, I really should be making use of it. Finally, frankly, techwise, I just don’t know what all is ahead, so you could say I’m hedging against the future by minimizing my risk in the form of capital outlay, and the biggest, cheapest upgrade I can get for a performance upgrade is the RAM.

Basically any time you buy technology, what you’re doing is really renting time on the box anyway (any box, be it a car, or a computer, or whatever), and at a future point you will have to make another outlay for better performance or compatibility for another program. I’ll install Windows XP Pro on the machine via Boot Camp and then I can finally run Visio. But I can see even leaving this at home everyday.

I think smaller and simpler is the new black. I realized this the other day when I stopped carrying all my gear to work. The less I have to carry with me, the better. I carry a Moleskine notebook, a flashdrive and maybe an iPod shuffle with me. Who needs to carry more than 1GB of music with you anyway? At some point it’ll be replaced by some kind of catchall mobile device, but it’s very far off in the distance.

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