We interrupt your regularly scheduled blogging for an episode of squeeage

So, I'd been telling NLLDH about how there's this really neat piece of software that some of my friends have started using that looks really great for writing and research, and I wanted to try using it, but it turns out it requires Tiger, Mac OS 10.4, and my laptop (which is NLLDH's old laptop) only has 10.3.9. And you can't buy Tiger anymore anyway, and my laptop (did I mention it was old?) possesses only the bare minimum requirements to run Leopard, which made me leery of updating (never mind the machine's dying battery and disconcerting habit of not actually going to sleep when it's put to sleep, overheating, and running the fan constantly...), especially since we were planning to get me a new laptop next summer anyway, so the upgrade would be kind of a waste of money.

At which point NLLDH suggests, why don't we just get you a new laptop now?

So I am blogging to you from a brand spanking new shiny one of these. And I am very happy.

(And after we bought it, NLLDH said, I don't still need to get you a Valentine's Day gift now, do I?)

(Our salesguy was funny - a fast-talking college kid named Chad [he asked how we were doing, we said fine, how about you? and he replied, CHADTASTIC!] who realized quickly that we knew what we wanted, but had to go through his spiel anyway. Part of that entailed asking what I was going to use the machine for, which seemed to meet with his approval, because a little later he told us he'd waited on a guy who said, "I want one of those and two of those [the big ones]," and Chad said, great! what are you going to use them for?, and the guy said, "Oh, checking e-mail.")

Comments

[sharon]

I've had mine about 18 months now, and I still love it to bits. Have fun!

(If you haven't already installed it, I highly recommend Quicksilver. It's hard to describe because it can do so many things, including search for files and launch programs, but it's a brilliant little program. And free, of course.)

[M.]

Squeee!!!! is the PERFECT sentiment! I got my MacBook in 2006 and it has traveled with me everywhere - to where I live now in Japan from my hometown in the States, to Korea and now Australia. I cannot wait to get Scrivener myself actually, I drool over it every time I see it.

[Bardiac]

Congrats!

[Katie]

Yay for a new laptop and NLLDH for suggesting it! (As a side note, I also want one of those and two of those [the big ones]. I so wish I could afford it.)

[T.E.]

O yay!! I'm awaiting delivery of the new MacBook Pro from school...Tell me what you think of Scrivener when you've had some time to play around with it!

[maggiemay]

Oh, I am soooooo jealous. My next computer is definitely going to be a Mac laptop.

And that guy at the end of your tale? You *know* all he's gonna use those for is the pron, right?

[phd me]

Fun! Enjoy the new 'puter! And I'm interested in Scivener, too, so definitely tell us what you think about it.

[Dance]

Fun and exciting!

Seconding the Quicksilver recommendation, even though all I use it to do is launch programs---which really lets me keep the dock (on the left side) more clear.

[medieval woman]

Ugh - those are like people who buy a Hum-Vee to go to the grocery store 2 blocks away.

Cool computer!

[desertdemocrat]

congrats! I'm still using a powerbook G4 and would love a new MacBook. Do download Quicksilver--it's a great tool--and check out DevonThink. It's a wonderful program for organizing and access all your files in such a way that you don't need to remember where they're actually stored on your computer.

[Belle]

Okay, here's one for y'all. Anybody know something that'll be fun on a MacBook Pro that does glagolithic scripts? I need to use diacritics from Croatian... and it's a pain in Pages or Word.

[T.E.]

Belle, you need a word processor that fully supports Unicode. The one I most often see recommended is Mellel (http://www.redlers.com/), though I haven't tried it myself. I have worked with combining diacriticals in TextEdit, but it's not a full-featured enough word processor for all my academic writing plus the funny characters.

[thehistorian]

Your old computer sounds exactly like my current one (an ibook). I am also going to upgrade and get a new macbook. Wasn't the whirring sound terrifying? It sounds like I can actually hear my files moving ever closer to a pit of despair from which they will never return.

[ppb]

One of my students refers to the Apple store as "gymboree for grown ups."

I love chadtastic!

And your use of the word squeeage makes me smile. My dear, dear recently departed friend used it all the time, but I've never heard anyone else do it.....

Here's happy dances for you!

[Rudbeckia Hirta]

Which color?

Oh, and Belle needs LaTeX. :)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Oh, I am very boring and went with white. Well, that, and I've always preferred bright-colored notebooks/binders/office supplies etc. to dark ones - I find the dark ones somber and depressing, so one of the things I've always loved about Apple is their bright white shininess (okay, it used to be beige, but you get the idea). That, and I'm too cheap to pay extra for the black! (However I may have to emulate a teenage girl or a gothboy and put some stickers on the machine, as NLLDH and I now have the exact same ones and I don't want to take his machine to school by mistake!)

And Rudbeckia, I begin to suspect that LaTeX is at the center of some kind of cult... ;-)

thehistorian - yes, yes, exactly, that terrifying potential file pit of despair! It *was* disconcerting.

Belle - good luck with the diacriticals. I suck at all that stuff - when doing Middle English, I convert the thorn to th and use a subscripted 3 for the yogh. I am always ashamed when I teach the Crusades and I know I'm butchering the Arabic terms because I never do the diacriticals.

I will have to check out Quicksilver - I've seen it recommended before. And I think I've downloaded DevonThink before, but I want to play with it again - I haven't managed to figure out quite what to do with it yet, but I think what I really need to do is throw all my research stuff into one (or two) of these programs and play, rather than be stymied by the blank screen of newness...

(maggiemay, you totally made me laugh. The lame thing is I hadn't even THOUGHT of that, but you are so, so right!)

Anyway, once I've got more of a handle on Scrivener, I will let you all know how it goes.

(And I'm sitting here waiting for the apartment maintenance guy and I really have to pee, but I know as soon as I shut myself in the bathroom is when he's going to arrive...)

[Rudbeckia Hirta]

I love the new integration between Mail and iCal and Address Book in Leopard. When someone emails me their new contact information, it's so easy to put in Address Book. And Mail is also amazing and putting things into iCal. Like if someone emails: "Let's meet Thursday around 9ish in Henderson 201" Mail can add that to the right date, at 9am, in the right place!

My only complaint about my (new) MacBook is that it's stupider than my old MacBook about knowing when it's plugged into the LCD projector in the lecture hall.

[Another Damned Medievalist]

WANT!!!!!!!! How much does it weigh??

[New Kid on the Hallway]

ADM, it weighs 5 pounds - which is heavier (a little) than my old Dell machine (although the Dell had a separate CD drive), but oh so very worth it! (That one was also a 12" screen, and this is 13" - that makes a big difference!).

[Kcl]

I thought the two of your were barely making ends meet?

[Another Damned Medievalist]

*is confused by the last question, as it sounds particularly judgmental and snarky*

It sounds like a good investment -- you can't do your job without the proper tools, after all.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

I don't think I've ever suggested we're barely making ends meet - I certainly never intended to do so. I've probably moaned about spending too much money/not being able to buy everything I'd like to buy, but there's a difference between not being able to buy as many new clothes as I'd like (because believe me, that's a lot), and barely making ends meet. I moan a lot.

I know I've said that we can't afford for me not to work, but that's not the same thing as barely making ends meet, either. To be more precise, we can't afford for me not to work AND pay off our debt AND live the way we'd like to live (and we're not living the way we'd REALLY like to live, but we're fine). What I mean: I know there are married couples who live on what NLLDH makes alone. Hell, there are families of 4+ who live on what NLLDH makes. If something happened and I was no longer able to work, we'd live on what NLLDH makes and not be destitute - and in fact, currently, we're doing that, as my salary (which is lower than his) is going to pay off debt. But given that debt (which, touch wood, should be paid off sometime this summer), our lack of savings (retirement and otherwise), and our desire at some point to own our own home (which we don't now, not even our own mortgage - we rent), we don't feel that the potential benefits of me not working for a year and only writing outweigh the income we'd lose. (Because would that guarantee that I'd get a tenure-track job? It's not a gamble I'm willing to take.) It's not really that we can't afford it in an absolute sense, just that we can't afford it in light of our other goals (especially getting rid of the debt, and maintaining our spoiled beasties in the life to which they've become accustomed!).

We're certainly not going to be buying computers every month or anything like that. But we crunched the numbers and made it work for now.