Mourning the death of loved computer equipment
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember a
faithful companion through thick and thin, a helpmate in times of
trouble, a source of constant entertainment and a worker
extraordinaire.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember
… a computer.
Mourning the death of loved computer equipment
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember a faithful companion through thick and thin, a helpmate in times of trouble, a source of constant entertainment and a worker extraordinaire.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember … a computer.
A laptop computer, to be precise.
The white Apple iBook G4 had a long life, one of service above and beyond the call of duty. It was dropped. It was smacked around. It was scratched and worn from use.
It outlived several batteries, and the keyboard had been used so much, about half the letters were worn off.
Yet it went on, living for seven years, a remarkable life for a laptop of its vintage. It limped along in its final months, slowing but not stopping, until one dark night when it went to sleep … and never woke up again.
Let’s look back at this laptop’s life, shall we?
This iBook was, at first, an impulse buy, brought on by a discount offered on last year’s model at an Apple store.
When this writer first bought it, she thought she must be a little cuckoo.
Another computer? Really? In addition to the several already littering the house?
The laptop has ended up paying for itself at least 30 times over.
These days, a laptop computer is indispensable to a writer. Almost as indispensable as ready access to the Internet. To work without a computer is to feel at a definite disadvantage, hobbling toward the finish line while the rest of the writers are racing ahead.
To give you an example, a few weeks back when the phone lines and Internet crashed for the better part of a day, I would really have been up a creek had I not been in possession of my trusty iBook.
I thanked the computer gods that I had Wi-Fi, and fled to a Starbucks in Prunedale, where there was Internet service on that fateful day. I had two articles due, and got them both done, thanks to my laptop.
To me, it has not been just a portable computing device. It has not been just convenient. It has not been just necessary to my livelihood.
It has been sort of like a little friend. A repository of my history of the last seven years, personal and professional.
And now it’s gone.
Oh, the pain.
Sure, it was old and funky. It was only a 13-incher. It had an outlandishly antiquainted operating system. The iBook had gotten to the point where it could no longer be updated without causing some kind of rift in the space-time continuum.
I faithfully backed up everything on it, knowing that someday, it might crash. So when the iBook died last week, I was as prepared as I could be for the end.
But I was still surprised at how attached I’d gotten to the little laptop.
The iBook is now resting in peace in my office. I can’t bring myself to part with it, just yet. It will have to go off to the recycler soon so that its parts can be re-used, or melted down, or at least disposed of sensibly.
I have to go shopping for a new laptop, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it just yet. The pain of the loss is still too fresh.
And the new one will be fast, and wonderful, and trouble-free. Yet it will be strange at first, getting used to something … well … recent.
Rest in peace – or pieces – old friend.
