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Sara Cammeresi

Warez! —

I have decided it is time to upgrade both my home workstation as well as its display. To this end, I ventured to a local Apple store. I'd never been in an Apple retail store before. I immediately came to the determination that Apple are not just selling computers; they are selling an entire lifestyle, what with the iMac-themed store (including the fire extinguisher door), the many Apple products on offer, and the `genius bar.' I observed that the MiniMac is cute, the iPod is small, the iPod Shuffle is very small, and the 30-inch Cinema Display is ginormous.

I played for a little bit and then made my way to the cash register, and I engaged in an intercourse with one of the registering gentlemen.

Me. Hello, I should like to purchase a 20-inch Cinema Display.
Registror. Ahh, that's a very good choice, let me go get one for you. [Exeunt, re-enters with The Box.] So to what are you going to connect this?
Me. [Lowers head, mumbling] I will connect it to just a PC for now, but I'm considering buying a Mac soon.
Registror. Hmm, perhaps you should consider buying a MiniMac to go with it!
Me. That won't be necessary: I'm thinking of buying a PowerMac; let's just get this sale put to rights.
Registror. Well you're making a very good choice with this monitor; in fact, I have to say that I'm a bit jealous of you!

At this point whilst awash in the Warm Fuzzy Feeling being provided to me by the employee, I observed how clearly the box was labelled, and I considered that perhaps I should have brought my sidearm to protect what would momentarily be my purchase, but sadly, Southdale Mall probably prohibits guns in those premises. At any rate, after an exchange of financial information, the purchase was complete, the new display was mine, and the conveyance therefrom back to my Royal Estate was uneventful and devoid of waylaying.

As a replacement for my Sony CPD-G500 21-inch flat CRT with Trinitron tube, the Apple display is fantabulous. My CRT was 4.5 years old and at 1600x1200, it was no longer converging very well, and at a refresh rate of higher than 60 Hz, what it did could not be called converging. Also, the contrast was not very good. After getting it installed on my Desk of Doom, I began enjoying the 16:10 aspect ratio of this 1680x1050 display, which I got working properly in Windows with just a little twiddling.

But this only kept the daemons of unbridled spending at bay temporarily, for yesterday, 8 February was the 26th anniversary of the beginning of my glorious existence. In accordance thereto, at approximately 9.45, I entered an order for a PowerMac computer with a 1.8-GHz G5 processor, 1 Gbyte of core memory, 80 Gbytes of backing store, a GeForce 6800 GT DDL video card, SuperDrive (which this month means a DVD-R/CD-RW drive), and a Bluetooth module (only $50 and cannot be added internally after purchase).

Sadly, it will take three to five weeks for this machine to ship, but the wait should be worth it. Apple have a history (like myself) of setting trends. Mac OS X is a very good blend of 99% of UNIX with a very slick UI backed by the venerability of NeXTSTEP. (I wanted a NeXTstation for some time, but I cut my antique computer phase short with a SPARCstation 1+.) Apple are the folks making the real innovations with features like Exposé and Rendezvous. On this basis, I have decided that Apple are worthy of my money.

(One trend I think might only be a few years off is the muggleisation of SMP. If you observe the PowerMac page in Apple's online store, of the four base configurations, three of them come with two processors. While I don't think the advent of consumers getting SMP machines is imminent, I think it would happen instantaneously if Apple were to start producing SMP iMacs or eMacs.)

posted by Sid at 19.34 / 107 in Apple     [ Comments: 3 ]