Geeeezzzz Louise!

 

The last two weeks, have been fun (not!).

Although I hadn’t realized it, my main machine is now 7 years old.

7 years old in computer terms is like 70 (10 computer years is the equal to a normal year). I really like to get every last drop out of equipment. Thinking back on it now, I’m not even sure if I started using this machine regularly right after I bought it.

I think I kept it lying around unused for almost two years!

That’s because the machine I had before it (that I got in 1997), I kept running as long as I could. Even before that, I kept my Ci running for as long as I possibly could. Anyway, I think you get the picture.

 So, I’ve had this machine for about 7 years and used it for about 5 and that means it’s more than likely well past time to upgrade but, I hold off on these things as long as humanly possible. The big indication it’s time to upgrade is when they start releasing system software that no longer supports the machine you have.

The new OS (Leopard), isn’t supported on G4s. Even the last upgrade for Tiger (10.4.11) never successfully installed on this machine. Speaking of which, stay away from that software upgrade thingy!

If you work on the Mac, you know that thing that come on automatically?

Well, you’re asking for trouble.

Sometimes, those wonderful upgrades are a little bit buggy and don’t work and you can find yourself in a world of pain. At least three times now I’ve had instances where I went to install some sort of upgrade only to wind up having to reinstall everything to get back to the place I was before I made the mistake of upgrading.

This is from June of 2008 and I still, STILL! Can’t absorb this lesson!

Upgrading a machine is EXPENSIVE! Every time Apple rolls out another system software upgrade it means your software won’t work or some other problem will crop up. I just wrote another entry about this recently... I mean I’m just that stupid! Just that dense!

So, I bought my first Mac in 1992... that was a Mac Ci. After that, I got myself a Mac Clone at a time Mac pushed out their software and allowed other vendors to make Mac hardware. The model I had was a PowerCenter Pro. Then, Madame X got me this wonderful Powerbook Pismo laptop. After that I got a PowerMac G4 (I think that was a digital audio version). Then I got an iMac and finally got the machine I’m working on now which is a MacBook Pro.

I’ve got the iMac in pieces at the moment. I’m installing other hardware into it. I still have the G4 and I even have the Ci around here. In all this time, I’ve always been able to break down a machine, swap out parts and fix them myself. As more time has gone on, things have gotten way more complicated with system software and certainly once they shifted over to Linux it made it even harder still to tweak things.

I just have to remember to STOP UPDATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE NOT MATTER HOW MANY PROMPTS I GET!