21 February 2011

[liff] My New Cyberdeck - SunDial Seven Launches

2562.

I finally can has upgrade.

One thing that has truly, truly hampered me is the age of my hardware. Up until last week, my platform was a Power Mac G4 … yes, a G4 … from 2003. It has served me honorably and well, and were it not for the relentless march of progress, it would have continued to serve well, if perhaps a little slowly.

I have been recompensed for a technical editing job I completed, however, and that has enabled me to acquire a long-delayed, extremely called-for, technical upgrade. SunDial Three, the old CPU, as devolved to The Wife™, as it's all she needs for her needs and more. Now, upon my desk, is an iMac.

I wasn't sure that an iMac would ever suit my needs; indeed, as a post some time ago vouchsafed, I was seriously considering a Mac Mini. I would still go that route, if it didn't make more sense to get the iMac.

My acquistion adventure took the same route my re-equipping adventure took two years back: PowerMax, that legendary Tualatin-based Apple reseller, who has been making people very happy for a very long time and has done it for me twice. You may find reviews about it online; they are not mere words. There are some severely happy people in the world of Macintosh because of them. The used range of Macs was impressive, to say the least. This particular one runs Leopard, and that, as much as an Intel heart, was crucially important. And it may seem "new to me" … but it seems new.

This iMac, for instance, was built in 2007. It's shiny, sparkly-clean, fast, powerful, and quiet, delivering power that I only thought would be obtainable via desktop Mac Pros. Of course, a replacement computer running Intel was absolutely essential, and this is a Core 2 Duo running 2Ghz. The old machine was a dual-processor PowerPC G4 PowerMac, packing 1.25Ghz.

I have need of a machine that will help me fight the competition battles that I plan on fighting. I need to catch up, and catch up quickly. This iMac - 20-inch screen, slimmer than a computer with this much power has a right to me, and quiet, quiet, quiet (the old G4 sounds like an air compressor next to it) will be instrumental in helping me to do some serious catching up.

I plan on documenting that in this, the public notebook of a striving, as yet unsuccessful but never truly giving up, graphic designer.

In the meantime, all mad props to PowerMax. I'll never buy from anyone else, if I can help it.

1 comment:

Chad Welch said...

Thanks for the info about PowerMax! They look pretty sweet. I'm content at the moment with my PC setup (its a pretty boss system that I got for free via my INSANE Dell replacement warranty) but if I decide to switch platforms, PowerMax will be a definite stop in my frugal shopping.

Thanks, Sam! Glad to hear you've got some more recent hardware to flex those skills with.