Sunday, December 5, 2010

A penguin’s story

About 15 years ago this week, a couple of big boxes arrived in the mailroom of my dorm. Inside was my very first computer, an Apple Power PC 7500. At the time, with it’s 100 MHz processor and 1 gig hard drive, it was beast of a computer. Not the very top of the line, but pretty darn close.




This computer, which I named Opus after Opus the Penguin from Bloom County, served me well for the next six or seven years. Near the end of its service, when all computers get a bit long in the tooth, it suffered a pretty catastrophic crash that required a reformatting of the hard drive. As part of the process, I renamed it Opus II.


Then the dark years arrived, the Windows* years. Although a faithful machine, Evil Opus was, to me, well, evil. Kinda like the arrival of the evil twin on a soap opera. Nothing good ever results.


The clouds parted again in 2008 with the arrival of Opus III, my Mac Mini. O-Trey has been a workhorse. Despite requiring the addition of more than a terabyte of external storage to give me a place to keep all my pictures and music, I have had no complaints...save one. As small as it is, it's not really that mobile. Or, as Roger Daltrey would sing “mo-bile.”


But guess what? That problem is no longer a problem. In fact, I’m writing this little missive from my couch while watching the Giants kick the crap out of the ‘Skins. Allow me to introduce you to Opus IV...




Oh, sorry, that was a profile shot. Here’s a better view…



And he’s ready for his close-up...



Despite being a little more than a tenth of an inch thick at its...well, thinnest, it doesn’t feel the slightest bit delicate. “It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.”


I’ve only had him since Thursday night, but I’m already completely satisfied. Along with untethering me from my desk, I can’t wait to use is with my camera while traveling. I’m looking forward to what I can do. In fact, the pictures here were downloaded and adjusted on OIV.


Also, following that first thought, now that I don’t have to be at my desk to write anymore, hopefully I’ll be blogging a bit more. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Only time will tell.

.

*This used to read "PC" but, as Seb pointed out in his comment, pretty much all computers are "PCs". So for clarity's sake and to not reinforce the whole "two countries separated by a commmon language" thing, I made the change.

7 comments:

Titania said...

Congrats on new baby big Opus, he seems impressive.

I was just looking at laptops... and cameras... and bikes... and powertaps... damn, so many things I want to buy and so little money.

FoggyDew said...

Titania - Just gotta save your pennies and buy them one at a time. Next on my list is either a new lens for my camera or a new mountain bike.

J said...

Still jealous

magnolia said...

yay for opus IV! (LOVE the name, by the way.) i got a macbook pro this year, and i love, love, love it. it's a worthy successor to my old plastic macbook from law school.

new shiny toys are AMAZING.

FoggyDew said...

J - It happens.

magnolia - it was a toss-between the air and the pro for me. But, in the end, I had to go with the sexier option.

Liebchen said...

I know you said it doesn't feel delicate, but I'd still be afraid of breaking it somehow.

That said, look at it makes me want to shop for a new laptop, too.

Sebastian Anthony said...

It really is quite thin, eh :P

I've played with the previous generation -- nice, certainly! Bit underpowered for me (editing full-res images would be a real pig), but definitely one sexy beast.

I'm still shocked that you've basically only had 4 computers in 15 years... that's pretty impressive! I must've had 10... or more.

(Also, a PC describes a desktop machine. Both Mac and Windows can be installed on a PC. (Just one of my many pet hates about Mac users :))