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the multicolored death of my first powerbook

the multicolored death of my first powerbook
originally uploaded by jspad.

Spooky had seen better days.

The fan ran more often than not, the damned thing sounded like it was wheezing. Probably not technically possible, but I figured the hard drive (its second) was going to generate enough heat to melt something.

But it was an unplanned and sudden drop to floor that finally put an end to its long and useful life.

Sure, I spent more time with the new model PowerBook from last April. (And if I’m being honest, with the ThinkPad from work.) But this machine was my first laptop, so I’ll always have a soft spot for it.

Goodbye, first generation titanium PowerBook.

The rare cracked PB screen reminds me of when I was in Eastern Europe about 10 years ago. I was traveling with one of the last b/w powerbooks, a PB190. I was sitting in a cafe in Sarajevo when I decided to download some photos from my camera. Stepping back, I tangled my feet in the camera cord and dragged the computer off the cafe table onto the cobblestones. All was well except that later that night it became apparent that I had a long crack across the bottom inch or so of the screen.

I limped through Europe, making do with external monitors and learning to keep everything out of that bottom 1″ of screen. The machine was otherwise reliable and a pleasure. When I got back to the states, Apple insisted that the screen was under warranty, despite the circumstances, and fixed it. The machine eventually passed away a few years later, after having been loaned to a friend making a first trip to Germany, from which his parents had fled prior to WWII. It was as though there was nothing more intense to come that could top that experience, and after the files were offloaded from the trip, the machine shut itself off and never started up again.

[...] Is nothing sacred? I wouldn’t want The Accidental Rifle to be used by Fedex, or this birthday wish appropriated by Hallmark. I love my PowerBook, but the stories I tell about it aren’t for Apple (or Microsoft or Lenovo). I don’t want, or need, to make a buck off every single thing I do. Some of the advisors to this train wreck in progress surprise me: Ross Mayfield (Mr Wiki) and Zeldman (Mr Web Standards). Guys, just because you can build something doesn’t mean you should. In principle, how different is this idea from the blog posts for hire scheme? Not very. [...]