{"id":255,"date":"2004-11-15T20:00:15","date_gmt":"2004-11-16T01:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/would_you_buy_a_used_computer_from_this_man"},"modified":"2004-11-15T20:00:15","modified_gmt":"2004-11-16T01:00:15","slug":"would_you_buy_a_used_computer_from_this_man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2004\/11\/would_you_buy_a_used_computer_from_this_man.html","title":{"rendered":"Would You Buy a Used Computer From This Man?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;ve purchased a 256 MB SODIMM from a very nice fellow on the <a href=\"http:\/\/episteme.arstechnica.com\/eve\/ubb.x?a=frm&amp;s=50009562&amp;f=57909216\">Ars Technica Agora Classifieds<\/a> forum. The extra stick of RAM is really for my kid sister&#8217;s iBook, when she gets back for Thanksgiving. Friends don&#8217;t let friends run OS X on 256 MB of RAM, folks, and that goes double for big brothers and little sisters.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also managed to sell my Powerbook to the mother of an old friend of mine, in order to subsidize the purchase of of a brand-new iBook. It was sort of a reckless purchase, but I figured that while I had a desktop, I didn&#8217;t really need the SuperDrive, DVI-out, and other Powerbook features, while I <em>did<\/em> care about the faster CPU, 802.11g card, and better battery life of the new iBook. I suppose I could have scrounged up more cash if I had sold the Powerbook on eBay or <a href=\"http:\/\/craigslist.org\/\">Craigslist<\/a><sup>[<a href=\"#15-1\">1<\/a>]<\/sup>  but it was nice to not have to worry about shipping, and even nicer to know that I was actually going to get a real check from a real, non-deadbeat person. I should note that when I brought over the &#8216;book so that my prospective buyer could &#8220;kick the tires&#8221;, she brought out tomato soup and toast and fruit salad for lunch. When was that last time that happened to you on eBay? I&#8217;m guessing, never.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I think I have figured out my Computing Nirvana. Right now, I have a main desktop and a laptop. Ideally, I would have one machine. Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;m thinking. By this summer, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/macosx\/tiger\/\">Tiger<\/a> should be out, and the Powerbook line should be refreshed at least once. (The Powerbooks are overdue &#8212; they&#8217;re looking really bad compared to the iBooks right now.) So sometime this summer, I sell the iBook and the G4 desktop and get the bestest 12&#8243; Powerbook I can afford, with Bluetooth, wireless keyboard and mouse, and external firewire drive for backup. Then I can use the Powerbook in closed-lid mode most of the time &#8212; but when I want to go work outside, I can unplug the display, pop in the battery, and go. Best of both worlds, I think. And no more syncing between machines. I am done with that.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also looking forward to playing with the new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/macosx\/tiger\/voiceover.html\">VoiceOver<\/a> spoken interface. Macintoshes have had   nifty voice features for a long time now,<sup>[<a href=\"#15-2\">2<\/a>]<\/sup>, but supposedly Tiger&#8217;s version is going to be, to use the technical term, way cooler. And that&#8217;s a good thing. &#8216;Cause life needs to be a little more like Star Trek. <\/p>\n<p><small><a name=\"15-1\"><\/a>1. Particularly Craigslist. I think Apple makes some fine machines, but what <em>are<\/em> those people thinking?<\/small><\/p>\n<p><small><a name=\"15-2\"><\/a>2. <code>$ say -v Zarvox 'Greetings, meatbag!'<\/code><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I should note that when I brought over the &#8216;book so that my prospective buyer could &#8220;kick the tires&#8221;, she brought out tomato soup and toast and fruit salad for lunch. When was that last time that happened to you on eBay? I&#8217;m guessing, never.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}