I bought a blue Apple clamshell-style G3 laptop back in February 2000, and despite the fact that it served me well for 3 years, I had basically decided to retire it about a year and a half ago. It had gone the way of a million obsolete computers before it… processor became antique, RAM was simply not enough to run Photoshop or Quark, and the battery had about 90 minutes of juice before it crapped out. Besides, I had written my first novel entirely on it, and for that, I wanted to hold onto it for the sake of nostalgia… if I should ever make it as a writer, then this machine could be bronzed and hung on the wall. Far fetched perhaps, but hey man— you gotta dream.

Fast forward to now, and life has maintained a financial plateau of sorts. While I designated a little bit of cash for an early summer computer purchase, I had to make a decision. Would I get a new laptop to replace the old one (now that I was starting my second novel), or would I get a new monitor for my desktop machine? I had the monitor since 1998, and you want to talk about antique— the damn thing weighs 80 pounds. Plus, after my last move, it had started to flicker. And if you read my blog from the other day, you know I opted for the cinema display, which happily ships out today for delivery next week. Most clutch.

So where does that leave me for the writing situation? The only place it could— I had to resurrect the old clamshell. In looking at it again, I recall how my mom had likened it to a toilet seat, which wasn’t far from the truth. The battery was completely wiped, so I had to dig through the studio for the charger. It took me forty minutes to find it, but eventually I found it hiding in a peach box of my fiance’s memorabilia. By today’s standards, the laptop didn’t have the speed or memory to run the current OS, so I had to search on Apple’s website to find one that would work. By some stroke of luck, I found one that loaded up.

Now the plan will be to install the current version of Word on it, and that’s it. Other than Firefox and Norton Utilities, there will be no other programs on it. I guess that’s good for the sake of being less distracted. Funny how efficiency works sometimes.

Although nothing is certain. It could still crap out on me in the next couple of weeks, but I’ve got to give it a try. Worse comes to worse, I buy another laptop, maybe a used one. And the irony would be that five years from now, I might have to resurrect that one too.