Health update on a Mac

The blog's gone a bit quiet recently, I know. Partly it's been my need to keep up with my father's Letters from the Past - there have been quite a few recently, and I'm trying to keep them to the dates on which they were written 66 years ago. Soon he will go on leave to attend my birth, and the strange journey will be over. There are no letters kept from the time after that - I suspect my mother my have had her hands full in the months till my father's demobilisation, and the wonderfully evocative letters which the ones I have hint at perhaps dried up - or were replaced by phone calls. I don't know, but I shall miss them.

But another reason for my unblogging is the fact that my desktop iMac has ... well, died. It's been staggering a bit for some weeks now, but I was managing to cajole it along with frequent emptying of the cache and so on. Yesterday, however, it turned up its toes and wouldn't let me past the sign-in stage. It's going to the doctor in the Apple Store this week - just in time before my Apple Care runs out - and I shall be able to report on the experience.

Meanwhile I am relying on the laptop I bought (a PowerBook G4) when I retired six years ago. This blog began on the laptop, and I used to feel totally at home on it. Now, however, the screen feels small and dim and the angle on my desk is all wrong (though it is crammed in front of the iMac) and I keep reaching for a mouse. The fan keeps whirring alarmingly, and as I type I'm aware that what is on the screen isn't keeping up with my flying fingers. The various apps tend to be out of date and there are too many things I can't use. Worst of all, I had promised myself that this would be the week I would do my tax return. Last year's stuff is all ... on the sick machine. I can't bear to start on this one. I shall procrastinate further.

And before you ask: yes, it's all backed up.

Marriage made in Macs?

'Tis done. I am not quite a bride - it's been a while - but if you look a the pic you'll see a sort of marriage going on, as my new iMac talks to my four-year-old laptop. Actually, it's more a case of the new machine apparently hoovering all the info out of the old one while leaving it behind at the same time. Nothing short of miraculous, if you ask me - which is why, presumably, only the very ignorant or very credulous would ever ask me anything about computers.

Anyway, I'm now using the new Mac, and very speedy it is too - except when my wireless signal appears to fail, as it has done a couple of times this evening. Don't know if this is a hiccup in the Airport or at this end, but time will doubtless tell. I love the big shiny screen, which allows me to see what I've got open far more readily than the small screen; I love its brightness and its wonderful colour rendition. And the keyboard is a joy - the low-profile click of the laptop with the ergonomically more pleasing position on the desk which I am now sitting higher above. Whatever is doing it, my typing speed seems to have improved already.

I still have some moving around to do - the desk is tidier than it has been in years, and I had to clean the dust of ages to allow the mouse to function (still getting used to the mouse, BTW). I can't see one of the pictures above my desk and will have to move it up the wall. But I'm a happy bunny nonetheless. Cheers!