No More Desktop Machine!

At least not now. Maybe later.

For the time being, there’s just this MacBook sitting on my desk, and damn, I have a desk again. There’s also something, well, peaceful about seeing a wall or a row of books across from me instead of a great big monitor. This really feels nice. I can’t believe what a creative stimulus having the space is. I mean, I just want to sit here all the time and DO something.

This all started last summer. I was working with two old Macs, both perfectly functional and fun to use: an original 500 MHz G4 TiBook and a 400 MHz Blue & White G3 with a 19-inch monitor. They were both tricked out about as far as they could go (the G3 had three hard drives) and ran on Panther. The G3 hooked up to the Buffalo wireless router via Ethernet, while the TiBook and my wife’s original tangerine iBook stayed cabled-free. It was one big happy if slow family, until the MacBook came along.

The MacBook was fast, 1.83 GHz, and with two gigs of RAM, it felt like I was piloting a starship. I mean, consider where I’d been. What’s more, it came with Tiger. Tiger was so much better than Panther, it wasn’t funny. Given that and the ready horsepower, I stopped using anything else.

Yet I still felt guilty for not using the G3. It was so solid and reliable, and it had a heart. Most Windows users have never experienced the kind of relationship Mac users have with certain machines and think we’re crazy. But it’s really true, especially with older PowerMacs. I hated to get rid of my PowerMac 8600 — what a magnificent beast — and the B&W G3 was even cooler. There was just something about it, a sense of pleasure in the air when you turned it on. Confidence. Calmness. Grace. I honestly don’t know. In all the time I had it, it never even hiccupped once, just ran like a boulder dropped from ten miles up.

I didn’t use the TiBook, either. There just wasn’t any contest. But with its wireless card and iTunes, it made a nifty “Internet jukebox” hooked up to my Fender Twin Reverb guitar amp. Two 12-inch speakers and real vacuum tubes make a glorious booming noise, especially inside an old adobe with 18-inch thick walls. It’s the jukebox I never had: finally some volume and some bass! Good thing, too, since I never got a replacement stereo amplifier after I killed the Yamaha.

So the MacBook was a joy, but the G3 still occupied the big white office desk that sat in the corner. In fact, with all the peripherals attached, it had always taken up the whole damn thing. (There was hardly any room for the keyboard.) I did still use it on occasion, but less and less, and then weeks would go by without ever booting up. I slowly became deeply frustrated looking at the dusty computer exhibit, day after day. Why did I have a museum in the corner? Was it some kind of security blanket?? No, it was my stinking upbringing, I’ll bet (sorry, Mom), that Depression-era “don’t get rid of it because you’ll never have another” b.s. that just drags you down and makes you feel deprived and stupid. I had a nice big desk but couldn’t use it, and not only that, I couldn’t use the reason that I couldn’t use it, if you get my drift.

Something shifted this morning, though. I got up, had a cup of coffee, and ripped that sucker out of there. I’ll stash it in the storage unit for a while — just postponing the inevitable — but maybe I’ll have the good sense to just get rid of every last associated piece, the old scanner, the CD burner, all the old software and silly cables that don’t fit anything any more. I don’t mean give it all to someone, either, I mean have a ritual, vanish it with love and respect, and maybe a big fire. It’d be like taking a shovel and laying a loved one to rest on your own, just you and God and the big blue sky. Wow. Besides, I think I need the closure.

This is lots bigger than just a desk, you know.

MY GOD, I STILL HAVE A VCR!!!