It's a beautiful thing

As I know I've mentioned, we've had computer problems for quite a few months now. The Mac G4 laptop was getting old, and quirky. John was frustrated because it wasn't handling World of Warcraft very well. Every patch was a nail-biting experience, and the computer would often crash while he was playing. I was very frustrated with iPhoto, which would no longer work, so I no longer had easy access to any of our photos. iTunes crashed quite often as well. Since all of our music is ripped to the Mac (beats carrying the CDs overseas), we functionally didn't have any tunes.

The worst part was that the computer was no longer taking any instalation well, so each time a program stopped working, there was a chance we couldn't get it up and running. We'd even had trouble re-installing the OS, which just about sent me into heart failure, even with the files backed-up. We were limping along on borrowed time, and we knew it.

It was time for a new computer. At first I thought about jumping to a Windows machine, mostly because of the cost, but quickly realized I couldn't do it, for reasons I won't bother all of you with. After a bit of reasearch I realized that John could still play World of Warcraft with a souped-up 17" iMac, which is more than enough computer for me at the moment, so the decision was made.

We walked out of the Apple Store yesterday with our new purchase. John was jubilant. I (who had handed over the debit/credit card) felt as if I were about to throw up. However, now that the money is officially gone, I have to say this is a beautiful thing. The monitor is luminous. We merged all 7,000+ of my photos into iPhoto last night, and got to trip down memory lane. I have to take some time to sort through them and put them into albums, but it won't be too hard. I'm actually looking forward to it (as well as ordering prints).

World of Warcraft runs extremely well, much better than even John expected. And we scored a free all-in-one printer/scanner/copier from the Apple Store, so I have access to a basic scanner for the first time in years. We're pleased.