Russell Beattie

So I was in an Apple store briefly today. Just briefly. I told myself I was not going to buy Panther, but found myself standing in line anyways when I looked over and saw the eMacs and I suddenly realized that this wasn't working out as I had hoped. So despite myself, I left the store Panther-less.

You see the eMacs are $799 brand new. You can get a 1.25 Ghz G4, 256MB RAM, 40GB HD and monitor running the latest and greatest Mac OS. Now, as you know, with shipping and a new monitor I've somehow spent a little over $600 on my Mac. If I added another $125 + tax to this for Panther I'm just about crossing the $750 threshold and therefore am not only not saving any real money, but am getting a far-lesser machine for my troubles.

Hmmmmmm.

I mean, at first it *sounded* good, no? A older Power Mac on eBay for $300. Then someone came in and bid up to my maximum: $350. Then the asshole who sold it to me tacked on another $55 for shipping. Suddenly I'm now paying $400 for a 4 year old Mac. Then it doesn't arrive for almost a month, and then it dawns on me that I don't actually own a monitor. I could've tried to ebay the monitor as well, but then I would've ended up paying god-knows-how much and getting a sub-par monitor and (my real motivation) I would've had to wait to use the computer. And the $200 19" was only a little more than the $150 14" one, so... A little bit here, a little bit there... and then I find out it has an old version of OSX on it. Argh!

It's too late to return the monitor as I've tossed the box (it was too big to keep in the apartment - and I really didn't think I was going to be considering bringing it back within 24 hours...). So hmmm. If I eBay this stuff, take the loss, and then put the money towards an eMac. or I could just "suffer" with OS 10.2 for a while until I forget what the total is.

Decisions, decisions. I'm typing this on the Mac as it's such a pleasure to use. I'll have to mull it over for a day or so. I wonder what I can do to eBay this bad boy and make a profit? Like, how much does more memory improve it's resale value?

Anyways, thanks to all the well wishers, you're all so, um, *cute*. But stay tuned, the drama's not over yet! Will Russell keep his Mac? What about Debian? Stay tuned eager reader!

-Russ

P.S. Did I ever mention that from 1990-1993 I went to college for graphic design journalim and used Macs exclusively? Mac OS 7 was the big upgrade. Those were my pre-geek days. One of the things I had the hardest time doing when I started using Windows was switching my thumb and pinky when cutting and pasting. And wouldn't you know it, a decade later I'm having trouble switching back! It took me a dozen tries to get those image links pasted in...