Updating technology tools
So, I’ve been wondering what to do about a travel computer for a while now. For the last 4 years I’ve been using my Powerbook G4. Every time I showed up at conference people admired it. Its light and sleek and many people still want to go back to the days when people could buy one. Truly its been a good laptop. But its got some issues:
- I’ve lost two of the feet. So its annoyingly tippy if set on a flat surface with no padding. I typically set it on its soft case when I present to keep it from tipping
- Its a PowerPC chip, which means I can’t run VMWare Fusion on it and sometimes I want/need to run virtual machines.
- Its running a little slow
- My husband likes to use it and I don’t share well
So, I decided that I had a few choices. Buy another Mac laptop. But most of the current ones are heavier than my Powerbook and therefore a no go. Mac Airs are pricey and I couldn’t bring myself to part with that much $$. Buy a netbook with either Windows or Linux. Sadly, I couldn’t bring myself to do this either because I do most of my presentations with Keynote, which means conversion. Also, my friend has a netbook and it looks cute, is light as a feather, but I couldn’t type very well on the mini keyboard. Fortunately, I ran into a colleague at code4lib who had a Mac Air and he gave me an awesome tip.
Buy a refurbished Air.
Same one year warranty as a new one, same eligiblity for Apple Care Protection, since Apple makes their own hardware refurb’d Macs get a really good going over, and significant cost savings. Combine this with a networked terabyte drive at home and an S3 account. That means I have all the network storage I want and I can get to my files from wherever I can get on the net. I now have an refurbished Air that looks and performs just like a new one and I don’t have to kill myself lugging around a heavy beast of a laptop. It runs like a dream and I can work comfortably on the couch or the road again.
This is uncanny — you’ve described *exactly* my current situation, down to the two missing feet on my battle-hardened powerbook g4. I have an old cut-up sweatshirt that sits underneath for it to rest on wherever it goes.
Though I’ve openly had an inappropriate crush on this 12″ laptop for years, I recognize that it’s getting a little long in the tooth, and it has been running slow despite all of my best efforts, as you mention. But you’re also right that the current gen of Macbooks, while sexy, just don’t compare.
I’ve been doing some low-level soul-searching as well as some price/feature comparison just along the lines of what you describe here, and haven’t come to any satisfying conclusions myself, though I’m encouraged to hear that you’ve been happy with your choice.
So which refurbed Air did you get: the current gen, or the previous gen? Last time I looked, both were available. Curious to hear if you think there’s much of a difference.
My refurbed Air has the following specs:
1.8 GHz Intel Dual Core
2GB of RAM
64GB solid state hard drive
The biggest difference I could see between the current and previous gen Airs, besides whether or not the hard drive is solid state or not, is the size of the hard drive. The solid state drives are smaller. But this really didn’t bother me.
I will say hackintoshing a netbook is also an option but one I wasn’t willing to invest the time into. A friend of mine did it successfully but I didn’t want to take the time. Plus, full size keyboard is so awesome.
one of us! one of us! :)
are you having any issues with the battery? mine takes forever to recharge. apparently it’s a thing with these older models. i’ll probably take it into the shop soon.
No battery issues yet. It get warms but not as hot as my work MacBook Pro which would fry my legs. Been watching TV from Hulu on it for a couple hours this evening. Only issue is that it dims the screen after a while. Do you have a solid state or traditional hard drive one?