I discovered this morning that my old Macbook, a white one which I picked up on October 29, 2007, I believe, is not supported on the new MacOS, Mountain Lion.
Yes, I’ve been using the same Macbook for five years now. And I will likely continue to use it–assuming it survives–into next year. The machine ran fine for three years. Then problems set in. It’s hard drive has been replaced twice. The battery in it was so overused that it had filled up with hydrogen gas and made the trackpad unusable. So now the machine no longer has a battery; it runs entirely on AC. The keyboard isn’t great either, but I don’t use the keyboard; I use a BlueTooth keyboard instead; as well as a BlueTooth trackpad. The memory has been replaced at least once as well.
Still, I haven’t lost data. I have daily backups to the cloud, to say nothing of the bulk of the important stuff also residing on a 1TB external disk (which is also backed up daily). That said, I sometimes get the idea that the machine isn’t going to wake up from a reboot. Indeed, the last few times I’ve rebooted it, it’s taken a couple of tries to get it up and running. So I avoid reboot.
Why haven’t I replaced it? Well, there are currently other priorities for money. Like saving for college for 2 kids, to say nothing of retirement. Then, too, I’ve been doing more and more on my iPad. But the truth is, it would be nice to have a brand-spanking-new iMac with a large screen sitting on my desk. And eventually, I will.
When? Well, I’ve kind of decided that I need to earn the money to get me the new machine. And I need to do it through writing. This year will be my best year so far for paid writing, but a large portion of those earnings are going toward my trip to Worldcon. If I can do better next year, however, then I may earn enough to pay for a new machine entirely out of my writing–and that would be pretty cool (to say nothing of the fact that the new machine would clearly be a business expense).
In the meantime, I have to hope that my old Macbook can hold out long enough to get some more stories written. And in a worst-case scenario, I could always use Kelly’s Macbook, which is capable of getting the new Mountain Lion upgrade.
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I have a late 2006 MacBook Pro, and I’m not eligible for Mountain Lion, either. I’m half considering selling it on Craigslist and picking up a newer model also on Craigslist.
The thing is, I use the laptop mostly for recording and processing sermon videos for church. I bought a new 1 TB internal HD for it, and other than having to run it on AC, it works perfectly well for my purposes. Furthermore, I love the keyboard on my current MBP more than any of the chiclet keyboards.
As you can see, I’m at the place where I’m talking myself into and out of upgrading… 😉
I do that too (talk myself into upgrading). Fortunately, I have my wife to keep me from doing that until I’ve earned the money from writing. 🙂