My Computer Bit the Dust

I did it now.  I killed my computer.  I am mourning its demise.  When I bought this computer five years ago, I tripped in my living room, and the MacBook Pro flew from my hands and sailed across the room, and hit the floor.  It put a dent in the wood floor.  I was panicked.  I picked it up and carefully opened it.  It turned right on. It was alive and well.  Just like when we trip and fall, and bounce up and say, “I’m good.  No problem.”  This computer has served me well for five years.  I took it on every trip I was on.  I have written my blogs on this computer.  I connect with my friends through Facebook on this computer.  I had 38,178 photos, and 711 videos on this computer.  I had a multitude of music on it, the most downloaded from my personal cd’s, and the cd’s no longer around.

Fortunately, a few weeks ago, I was considering trading in my laptop and purchasing an iPad Pro.  It is smaller, and could do most of the things I do on the computer.  Dennis has a large screen iMac, and I made an account on his computer for me.   (That’s where I am typing now).  It’s totally separate from his documents.  Before I did this, I moved all my documents on the cloud.  We have a shared cloud with a ton storage,  it’s terabytes, but I don’t remember how many, but there is plenty of room for all of our documents.

My first experience with personal computers was in the mid 80’s when my dad purchased a Gateway computer, manufactured from all places, Iowa!  Remember the Gateway computer?  It was shipped in boxes that were printed to look like Holstein cows.  They were great computers in their time.  Anyway, I was working on my Masters degree at the time.  I was poor, and a personal computer was not in my future.  I would write my papers, and then go to my parents’ home, and type it on my dad’s personal computer, with big floppy disks.  Then I printed the paper on a dot matrix printer that sheet fed paper that was perforated between sheets.  I thought this was really high tech.  I was always afraid when I typed on my dad’s computer that I would do something wrong and break it.  These contraptions were new.  My dad kept telling me I needed to learn DOS, and that was a foreign language to me, and I never did, nor did I ever need that skill.  Personal computers became more simple so we average people could use them.

I had Macintosh computers since almost the beginning.  My oldest son got his first Mac or Apple computer when he was in high school.  He just turned 47 years old.  (That’s a whole other story how I could have a 47 year old son when I am only 45)!  In the early 90’s I bought an Apple Quadra 840AV.  That AV stood for audio/visual.  Yes, I could do video, but it was slow, it chugged its way through the program.  I also had a separate scanner, and in 1994, I made a 1995 calendar for my family.  Everyone was in awe that I could do this.  There were no calendar programs.  I made a video on it, and it took hours, and it crashed often, but it did the work.  It was new and inventive.  

In the late 90’s, I had a job that I was doing a lot of work in the Windows format, especially Excel documents.  It was time for a new computer so I decided to purchase a Dell.  I could do work from home on Excel and Word.  Although, if I recall, I first had WordPerfect.  I loved WordPerfect, and to this day, I think it outshone Word, but it disappeared, and if you were on a PC, you had no choice but to be using Word if you wanted to do word processing.  What a funny term that we used to call, “typing a letter!”  I had this Dell for a couple years.  It was continually getting viruses.  It would bog down.  It was just a horrible experience.  My sons, all Apple users, told me to go back and get another Apple computer and kick that Dell to the curb.

I didn’t have that pretty color (pick the color you wanted) Apple computer.  When I bought my first iMac, I was amazed that I didn’t have this ugly tower with the drives, and all the slots.  They were ugly and took up a ton of room.  My computer was one big screen, and everything lived behind that screen, including a slot for the cd drive.  (I miss those).  I liked being able to pop a CD or DVD into my computer.  That is gone.  We now download everything—I own it but I can’t put it in my hand.  It’s in that thing called the internet and the cloud. So that’s a photo of my “new” iMac.  The screen was thick. The 2nd one was much thinner with none of the slots in it any longer.  The monitors are now very large and thin and sleek.  A few years ago, I ditched desk top computers for the laptops, first the MacBook Air, and then the MacBook Pro.

So, the other day my MacBook Pro actually committed suicide.  It was on the sofa in our living room in Arizona.  All by itself, it jumped, okay, slid off, and the hinge side of the laptop hit the floor with a mighty “BANG,” and I knew, deep down–I knew, it was bad.  We have ceramic floors—nothing soft like carpet, or semi-soft like wood—just hard ceramic.  BOOM!  It was gone that quick.  Like a gunshot in the the heart of my laptop.  I was utterly heartbroken.  A few days before I went online with Apple’s trade-in site, and I could get $600 for my trade.  Just like that, at the blink of an eye, BOOM!  My computer is worth ZERO—did I say $0.00.  Nada.  Nothing.  A big giant paperweight.

I have not purchased a replacement yet.  The young man selling devices at the Apple store asked me what I use my computer for.  Let’s see — Facebook (of course, all grandparents are busy bragging and sharing photos of their precious darlings), Blogs.  That is the biggie for me.  I love writing my blogs.  I love playing with Photoshop, and adding graphics to my photos, and combining photos.  I always liked a good book with lots of pictures.  Graphics pull our attention back to the what we are reading, and I want lots of graphics on my blogs.  I guess you have noticed that already.  I told the sales person that someone suggested I get an iPad Pro with the pencil to do my blogs.  I’m not sure it is the best solution, but then maybe I am just connected to a computer device.  I do Excel spreadsheets for address lists, etc.  But, my husband has an iMac—the desktop computer.  I have an account on it.  My documents are in the cloud, and I can access them on any device.  

The decision has not yet been made.  I am not sure I want to do the iPad Pro.  It’s as expensive as the laptop.  Because I have a great phone for photos, email, and Facebook, I can go a week without making the decision.  On top of all that, it is mid November.  Christmas is just around the corner.  I am not sure I want to spend my money on me.  I have kids and grandkids I would like to spoil with the spoils of my past employment (retirement funds)!  It will take some thinking.  I am a techie girl, so the decision will need to be made soon.  If you have an iPad Pro and are using it in place of your computer, please comment below of how that is working for you.  In the meantime, I shall mourn the loss of my dear friend, the MacBook Pro.  You served me well until you thought it wasn’t worth living anymore—you cost me $600.  Maybe I shouldn’t mourn—maybe I should be angry at the selfishness of this laptop to destroy itself before I could trade it in.  Maybe it was mad at me because it knew I was considering setting it aside for a new model.  Maybe it thought I was an unfaithful owner.  Maybe I’m thinking too much about what a computer (who cannot think—I don’t think) is thinking!