Just in time for Christmas, it’s–
the Computer Meltdown Problem of Doom!
When things go, they all go at once. Like the economy.
I have two computers: a 2006 MacBookPro laptop and a 2002 G3 tower. Both have been acting quirky for a while. The laptop whirs and buzzes and the tower survived a blue screen of death after three days of rebuilding it. But it’s clear that both are at death’s door. The laptop now no longer allows the single-click option; everything is a double-click. Super annoying. And the tower moves…so…slow…
I seriously don’t know what I’m going to do. I need a new laptop for travel and a new iMac for home to do my work, not to mention finish the two books I owe, but I am ridiculously broke.
Is it me, or is there something strange about having to give the Steve Jobs Estate $7000 (new puters plus software) every few years?
I’m trying to think up some offer that would generate $7000—I’ll illustrate that children’s book you’ve always wanted to get published?—sexual favors?—while I watch my machines fade away.
Anyway, happy Christmas. If your computer still works well enough to read this.
21 Comments.
I suggest you go to Ubuntu.com and check out the free, open source OS. Follow the directions to create a bootable CD, and buy a computer with no OS. Then install the OS.
What Joe said, but with greater detail.
A few words of advice which may turn out to be entirely impractical, but here goes. I realize you are facing an immediate problem, but long-term solutions are your friend:
I’m not an Apple hater – I’m simply not rich enough to own one. I have one of their phones and admire the simplicity of its operation.
Ditch the Apple OS and go PC. If you really want to live in a Socialist Utopia, go Ubuntu/Linux. Ubuntu/Linux will do everything you want to do, but it will take book learning and elbow grease to get there. I am assuming that the heaviest crunching your computer does is in the scanning/graphics processing department.
Don’t buy computers off the shelf. Have them built for you by a professional to suit your specific needs. This is cheaper in both the longer and shorter term! Because I buy computers with an open framework, my last PC lasted over 10 years and now has a second life as a Linux box at my mother’s house. Whenever it would break down, I would crack it open and replace the surprisingly cheap components. Even though I don’t write code or work in IS, I am certain that a PC is the easiest thing in the world to fix on your own.
It is important to mention that I use my computer as a recording studio and it was built specifically for that purpose at the mind-boggling price of $800. A slightly more expensive computer and monitor would easily handle the graphics-intensive work that you do.
Getting away from Apple will help you prepare for the hard times ahead. Being an artist at the mercy of a computer sucks. Hang in there, we love you.
I use Ubuntu on my public use computers at work and love it in that application.
The problem with ubuntu/linux is there is a STEEP learning curve on getting things done. You can generally figure out the answer but be prepared for hours of studying cryptic explanations of how to do things. Linux is open source but not open minded. If you are a newbie, their feeling is learn it or get screwed.
I chose learning it but my job affords me the time to fuck around with computers (and to spill my stupid rants here and elsewhere). If you go Linux, set aside a block of time for any changes you want to make.
@Nom: I hear you; as it is I can’t believe how crazy techie the Gallery2 and WordPress geeks are. And I used to be a computer programmer. A lot of “just” do this or that, with no explanation now…very offputting.
Ted writes about his computer dying and the Linux geeks come crawling out of the woodwork. Weird.
Yeah, go with Linux Ted. Of course you’ll have to spend a few years learning how to install the correct packages from a command line, re-compile the kernel every few months, install the windowing system, and on and on. Oh, and if you ever have a problem or ask a question you’ll be told to RTFM. That is if you get past useful error messages like “The ext3 file system creation in partition #9 of IDE1 master (hda) failed.”
I remember about twelve years ago hearing from the Torvalds minions that Linux would be on every desktop. Yeah, how’d that work out for ya’? Not too well.
vWhat exkiodexian said.
A new Mac will, unfortunately, probably require a new copy of Adobe Creative Suite (if that’s what you use). The version that ran on a G3 is no longer supported on Lion (it might be supported if you can find a Snow Leopard Mac, but that’s not so easy these days). Unless you need the advanced features of PowerPoint and Excel 2011, Open Office has an adequate Word Processor, Presentation Software, and Spreadsheet.
Yeah, I use the Adobe stuff. Gotta have it.
…….or you could be sensible and just buy a PC, Ted. I’m still using my PC I built 5 years ago for about $500…My HP laptop from ’96 only lasted 4 years, and I don’t know how long I’ll keep this. I’ve got a brother 5-in-1 printer that’s been kickin’ it for 7 years.
I don’t know, Ted, I think you must be part of that 1% if you’re dropping $7,000 on a computer. That’s insane….how much do you pull in a year?
Stop whining and being a baby. Save what you want toa few DVD’s and then reformat the hard drives. This will eliminate all the crap that accumulated over the years and give you “new” computers to work with. Jesus H. Christ. Why do believe all the bullshit that you read? Many of our most important things run off of “old processors and technology”. The airplanes you trust to fly in use “old processors”. They work just fine as long as you don’t fill them with accumulated crap and shit. Ignore most of the other posts here. You don’t “have to” learn a bunch of new things or “pay Microsoft every few years” if you don’t have the bucks. Stop believing the bullshit. Get smart, and quit whining. Plus, get a new haircut some voice lessons to stop looking like a soft, round whiner in your videos. Your image in the videos could use some improvement.
Okay, so maybe you need a new computer, and I’ll even grant you that you may need a Mac given your line of work and how much of a pain changing OS can be, but why on Earth do you need two? And how do you figure the $7,000.00 to Steve Jobs’s estate? Let’s face it if you are broke, and considering how underpowered a 2002 G3 is is compared even to a the MBP, you could probably get away with one MBP ($1,200.00 for the least expensive model) and an external monitor, maybe even the one you are using with the G3. As for software licenses, those go to Adobe, not Apple, and you may want to look into open source alternatives.
Good luck, and happy Christmas
Stop begging and whining. Geez, you sound like the guy you look like! Reformat the drives, install whatever operating system, and move on. For God’s sake, it isn’t rocket science. Are you Beevis or the other guy? Geesh, dude, we are further under debt than you are, so stop begging us for free shit.
Do most of you clowns know that the planes you fly on use older processing systems? The medical systems and more still use older precessores and system. The satellites orbiting use older systems. What, are you a bunch of nitwits? Of course not, you don’t know shit about anything except trolling each other.
I have two Mac Minis. One is an original with upgraded disk the other two years old. Both work fine. I suspect the slowness is either disk or ram. Both can can be gotten from newegg or similar. The lap top is easier to upgrade than my Minis are. And upgrades are much cheaper too. Ditch the G3 tower. The newest Mini with the dual core processor is much, much faster than your G3.
Beginning for a mini is 599 and the upgrade processor and memory and disk are all available from newegg and others and less expensive than getting full blown from apple.
Dang…I might just get one myself and see who would want one of my others.
Just my 2¢
Correction. The new mini is easy to upgrade. Just looked at the specs.
rikster, yeah if you’ve been following him, Ted is a melodramatic narcissist…….his problems are epic travesties of the first degree, because he is an extremely important person. This isn’t the first one, I recall his meltdown over changing his blog service company. At some point in the past couple years (can’t remember exactly when) he melted down over getting the flu. . . . excuse me. . . Ted had swine flu..he thinks. That’s when he divulged spending $800 a month on medical insurance. Which suggests he’s not exactly broke. And then there’s the fact that every time a TSA agent pats Ted down, he tirelessly writes about it.
If you follow the Rallster you should be used to it. He’s kind of like Michael Moore….he does a lot of really good things and includes just enough bogosity to allow people to focus on that and not his message. Even when he’s right on target I still get the feeling that he’s more concerned with the credit he gets rather than the issue itself.
That makes me think….Ted, have you ever gone on The Daily Show?? I’d like to see Jon Stewart interview you.
@aggie: And a merry happy to you, too.
Never been on Stewart, nor invited.
Dear Aggie Dude – I completely understand. Sometimes the things you do no longer work as the world moves on. I have had to reinvent and change jobs several times over the lat 40 years. It seems there are very few “jobs for life” anymore, and if Ted will listen, he may find a few friends that want him to do the same. This doesn’t mean stop making cartoons.
I was employed with a small company called DiscoVision Associayes after I left the US Army – we made the first optical discs – after this was bought out, I became an Audio and Video Specialist – then I moved on to the Avionics fiels, where i did the repair quality and development of new Flight Systems – Over her in Klaipeda, Lithuania, there is no demand for such experience or knowledge – it’s a fairly dull and small group of provincial people that recently became free of the Soviet Union. The simple thing I am trying to say is that you can never “rest on your laurels” – time moves on, and if you don’t get off the track, – it runs you over.
Ted, I’m definitely *not* a Mac fan, so please take my suggestions cum grano salis that they deserve, but a laptop that «whirs and buzzes» sounds to me as if it’s overheating, which is sending the poor fan(s) into paroxysms. Have you ever popped the case ? If not, expect to see an awful lot of dust inside when you do – a thorough cleaning might just relieve some of those symptoms. If you don’t dare open the case yourself – I fully understand your reticence – perhaps there’s a fan of your cartoons in your immediate area who’d be willing to help out (but do check out any such offers carefully and make certain that you and the other chap/lady work on the box *together* – this would be a great way for the powers-that-be to sabotage your work) ?…
As for your commitment to Apple and Adobe, I know it’s impossible to convince a fan that other hardware and software can work just as well as his or her favourites (the psychological term for this phenomenon is «cognitive dissonance»and as my elder daughter is a leading musicologist and shakuhachi musician, and absolutely *must* have her Mac laptop for her music work, I am not unfamiliar with its power), but you might, as others on this thread have suggested, want to consider trying a PC with a Linux distro installed – I suggest Ubuntu for ease of use. Anything you can do in Photoshop you should be able to do in GIMP, and LibreOffice is an excellent alternative to MS Office. Yes, there is a learning curve involved – but you don’t give the impression of having attained that degree of senility which would render such intellectual effort impracticable….
Good luck !
Henri
Very interesting, rikster. I visited Klaipeda about 10 years ago with my first major adviser. He was from there and his family lived in Vilnius…..very much enjoyed it. I really loved Svyturys Ekstra until someone pointed out to me that unique flavor made him suspect it was bottled down stream from a toxic dump…..it’s good if you don’t think about that!
Myself, I plan to have a job for life….we’ll see how that works out for me.
I have Linux Mynt installed on my Mac Mini.
If you are really a Mac fanatic and yet you want something cheaper, you can actually build a REALLY good computer out of PC parts for about $600 to $700, install some custom OSX driver extensions and hacks, buy a single copy of OSX (≈$90) and be off with what would roughly have cost $2000 or more at the Apple store. Obviously the initial set up is as hard as doing Linuxy set up things ) as mentioned by exkiodexian (technically it is actually the same thing because what you are doing is trying to set up Darwin, the free BSD linux kernel at the core of OSX. However, once you get it up, it is just a mac and is every bit as easy and friendly to use as something you would buy at the apple store (so long as you DON’T EVER TOUCH THE CUSTOM SET OF WORKING EXTENSION DRIVERS FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER). The one issue with this, obviously, is if you try to upgrade the operating system to a newer release of OSX you usually do have to play with your extension drivers again which often results in tears and significant downtime…
To be fair to your computers though, those are really really old. I know you are deeply impoverished but computers really can only be expected to last so long. If you look at statistics for laptops their average functional lifespan is supposed to be just over three years. Yours is at five. In human years that means it is about 130 years old (going by average American life span, of 133 ish in most other western countries with better health care then the US.)
The current lowest end macbook pro is about $1200 strait. I’ll donate a third of that to you for this purpose on the 1st of 2012, the rest you will have to acquire some other way. If you hunt hard you can find some sale prices that shave a bunch of of the strait $1200. Good luck.
@someone: Thanks in advance, that is very cool of you. And believe me, I will explore every way to get the price as low as possible!
Happy New Year!