The short version: Work laptop had a hard drive crash, completely shot without warning. Happily, almost all files and data are backed up to a network. I'm clunking along on a replacement laptop waiting for it to be fixed, but am thinking I should really have a separate laptop for lugging around.
So we have an iBook at home sitting next to a printer. Its job these days is to print greeting cards. That's it. It seemed like a good idea at the time to purchase it for my wife, but it was a disaster. Hardware failures, trips to Apple Store, shipped to factory twice. It seems to work OK now, but the cheap replacement laptop (a lightweight Toshiba Satellite) I purchased for the month it was gone is such a great machine that my wife won't use the Apple for anything except greeting cards (which it does very well).
So, the question: is it worth the trouble to upgrade the OSX from 10.29 to something higher so that I can run a Windows emulator to run the various Windows applications I use? Or should I buy another cheap laptop? Right now it has 512 in memory, but I think it can go up to 1 GB (but try to find that info on Apple's website!!).
Software I use include Adobe Acrobat Pro, MS Office, E-Sword, Noteworthy Composer, Dragon Speaking, and a bunch of propriatary legal-oriented software. I never thought of myself as a power user, but I routinely have 3 or 4 applications running at the same time and I use them all.
One other thing, the Safari browser on the iBook just plain stinks. Many sites don't support it (including the official State of Washington website--heh!). It is unstable and crashes a lot. You can't upgrade the browser without upgrading the OS. Netscape came with it and it crashes too.
Heh. The more I type the better that Office Depot sale on Windows machines looks. Tell me if the iBook is worth salvaging.
So we have an iBook at home sitting next to a printer. Its job these days is to print greeting cards. That's it. It seemed like a good idea at the time to purchase it for my wife, but it was a disaster. Hardware failures, trips to Apple Store, shipped to factory twice. It seems to work OK now, but the cheap replacement laptop (a lightweight Toshiba Satellite) I purchased for the month it was gone is such a great machine that my wife won't use the Apple for anything except greeting cards (which it does very well).
So, the question: is it worth the trouble to upgrade the OSX from 10.29 to something higher so that I can run a Windows emulator to run the various Windows applications I use? Or should I buy another cheap laptop? Right now it has 512 in memory, but I think it can go up to 1 GB (but try to find that info on Apple's website!!).
Software I use include Adobe Acrobat Pro, MS Office, E-Sword, Noteworthy Composer, Dragon Speaking, and a bunch of propriatary legal-oriented software. I never thought of myself as a power user, but I routinely have 3 or 4 applications running at the same time and I use them all.
One other thing, the Safari browser on the iBook just plain stinks. Many sites don't support it (including the official State of Washington website--heh!). It is unstable and crashes a lot. You can't upgrade the browser without upgrading the OS. Netscape came with it and it crashes too.
Heh. The more I type the better that Office Depot sale on Windows machines looks. Tell me if the iBook is worth salvaging.