Laptop Defeat, or Bill Gates, You Lose!

I have been lucky, up to now, in that I have never had a computer hard drive die on me. That is, until Thursday morning. I had planned a busy day of writing. But something was not right with my Toshiba laptop. It was running really slow (even for it), and freezing.

I had an idea that its days were numbered- I was backing up much more often than usual. I’d told myself that I wouldn’t get another PC. I was sick of all the fiddling with virus software (the latest Symantec is completely impossible- I had to run a patch every week to get the virus update), the incredibly intrusive “Automatic Updates,” the buggy software, the knowledge that eventually I’d have to break down and buy Vista, which looked ridiculous. I told myself I would finally get a Mac Book and be done with it. But I had more expenses from my move than I’d counted on (like the enormous air conditioner I had to buy to make it possible to sleep in my windowless bedroom during the summer), so I kept putting it off. And frankly, I was leery of the cultishness of the Mac people I know- my brother and sister, my boyfriend, my old roommate, pretty much everyone I know under the age of 30.

The Toshiba froze when I was trying to read my email. I restarted it, printed out a copy of the one document I had to have this week (lyrics to audition for the BMI Songwriting Workshop). First the screen went blue, and then black, with a pulsating cursor, asking for the password for my hard drive. I called Toshiba, and the guy on the other end of the line said, “Lady, your hard drive is dead.”

So the all writing day turned into going into Manhattan, since I had no email access, then home, and then back again to meet my boyfriend to go to Tekserve (which is much more pleasant that Datavision, the nearest PC repair place, I must say) and buy a Mac Book. The Tekserve guy took my money, and gave me a Mac Book and a chocolate bar.

I think writers have a deep attachment to whatever they write on. When my old laptop was in the shop getting a new CD drive, I could feel this physical sense of absence. Not to mention the lack of web surfing, email, and music other than the radio. So I’m still getting used to my Mac Book. But I hope we’re together for a long time.