stripethree

It’s been a while since I’ve had a good new, or in this case new to me, tech toy to play with. I have been casually browsing and pondering some sort of computer purchase since my situation was gradually moving towards ‘dire’. The Cube is, and has been, dead. I tried a bunch of things to fix it and have resigned to the fact that it’s not coming back. I was given a friend’s 14″ iBook that died so I could pull the hard drive for her to get her data back and I haven’t been able to fix it yet. Everything about the problem says logic board, but I haven’t had any success with it yet.

Then my Powerbook starting acting up with symptoms of a bad reed switch or inverter cable. It will not sleep or wake properly sometimes, and more telling, it will randomly go dark regardless of power source, charge level, etc. It’s fixable, but, well, I’m not positive that’s the only problem and I wasn’t too keen on taking about my only working computer for a recon mission.

I found out Anand was selling his laptops to get a 13″ MacBook Pro, one of which was a Dell Vostro A90 with some nice extras. It was not much of decision since the price was right and I knew I could trust the condition it was in. This is the same friend I had Summer get her iBook from and it’s been running flawlessly. The Vostro arrived yesterday and it’s pretty kickass. It has two solid state drives, an 8GB running Mac OS 10.5.6 and a 16GB running Windows (you have to physically swap them but it takes all of 3 minutes), 2GB of RAM, 802.11g, Bluetooth, build in video camera, etc. etc.

While it does not have a lot of drive space, for what I plan to use this for it won’t need it. I’m going to take a whirl at fixing the Powerbook and hopefully that will work fine. I’m still looking for a second hand Mac Mini for a set top box, but people trying to sell them on Craigslist are asking out of this world prices. This machine will be great for travel – I plan on taking it with me week after next – and will also be great for some car related things (c’mon, you knew there had to be a car tie in somewhere). With the Windows drive, it will be perfect as a VAG-COM machine to scan and clear codes and, with the same cable, I can download a free program from GIAC and change engine maps with a few clicks. I see the addition of a 100 octane tune in the near future.

The biggest challenge will be adjusting to the keyboard. It’s about 90% of the size as a traditional laptop keyboard, has a few auxiliary keys shuffled around, and has different tactile feedback that what I’ve been using. I don’t see it as being that big a deal once I get used to it.