computers

I bought my first computer 23 years ago this fall.

It was the “Turbo” model and ran at a whopping 10 MHz. The hard drive was the size of a big Mac, and had 20 Mb of memory. Not Gigabytes, but Megabytes. It came with 256 Kb of memory. I got some spider thingies and put them in to increase the riotous high of 640 Kb.

That is like talking about a model T, while you are sitting in the newest Corvette. But the old gal did get me through graduate school and get me that coveted (by me at least) Master of Fine Arts degree.

This MacBook is about 2 years old. It came with 1 Gb or RAM, with a slot for another 1 Gb. Those are numbers that are beyond my comprehension, but that is not even close to what the newest computers.

The hard drive was a rather anemic 70 Gb. I am not a huge power user and I was cruising along just fine when boom. I had filled my drive.

I know there are file on here that should never be here. I know I could trim all of that down, and gain some space, but sooner or later I would need to get a new drive. So I decide sooner was better. In the old 20 Mb days, we did a LOT of emptying. Even on text only files the capacity was limited. Remember those 5 ¼” floppies?

My last iBook took 70 screws and a lot of time to change the hard drive. Shops charged $75 to 100 for the trouble. Ifixit.com lists 42 steps!

But this one is different. Take out the batter, take out a piece of shielding and there it is. Grab a tab on the drive, pull it up and out. How is that for simple.

So I ordered a new one today. This one is 250 Gb and should hold me for a good while. Since I retired I won’t be getting a new mac every few years, so this one has to last as long as it can.

Now, if I just had not spilled orange juice on the keyboard!

I have changed keyboards on a lot of PowerBooks, some were quite easy. But on this one, the keyboard is one unit with the entire top, so I get not only a new keyboard, but a track pad and clicker.

I have the part. It has been sitting here mocking me for too long. I’ll fire up my old G4 desktop, get on the internet, and follow the instructions, carefully.

There are 12 steps to removing the top, and of course, 12 to put it back together.

But that sounds a LOT better 42 (times 2).