dieBook G4

So, two nights ago, I got a strange message on my iBook stating that Mail.app couldn't write to any of the mailboxes so I should make room on the volume my Home Folder is on. Except that there were still a few GBs left on it. So I logged out. And I noticed, while the machine was logging me out, that the glowring on the power adapter's plug had flashed off and on. Not the typical behavior.

As I tried to log back in, I got a kernel panic. This is something sort of analogous to Windows' Blue Screen of Death, and since I haven't actually seen a kernel panic on any of my machines for several years, it took me a moment to realize the level at which things had gone south.

So I shut the iBook off, restarted it while holding down the 'T' key (for Target disk mode), which turns the whole machine into an external Fire Wire hard disk. I plugged it into my PowerMac and dragged my entire Home Folder off of it and onto the Mac mini's 1TB drive. Success!

I tried just about everything I could think of, but the iBook kept failing.

Well, shit.

After much anxiety and stress yesterday, I burned my personal discount at work and ordered me a 2.0GHz 15" MacBook Pro. What's interesting is that it's fast enough and capacious enough in a stock configuration that not only do I not have to order extra RAM from somewhere else, but its speed is in the same ballpark as my PowerMac G5. Which I am selling.

So in a 15" package, I have a desktop replacement portable again. I'm really not able to comfortably afford it, but I also can't afford to be without one.

Such is the life of a queek.