Bad news! My Powerbook G3 went kaput yesterday. After a day or so of troubleshooting, I’m blaming it on a dead Power Management Unit. I bought it used in 1999 and have been using it heavily since. It’s lived in 7 apartments with me (yup, 7!) from Boston to Green Bay to Minneapolis to Boston (again!) and now to NYC. I still think that 4-5 years is way too short a lifespan for a computer, especially since it was meeting my needs in every other way. But, alas, that’s life in these days of planned obsolescence.

Anyway, the really bad news is that I stored everything on that computer. I’m hoping that my diagnosis above is correct and that the hard drive is unharmed, but we’ll find out soon. If not, I’ll have lost lots and lots of stuff…

I’m replacing it with an eMac. It has a 700 Mhz G4, a combo drive (CDRW,DVDROM) and a 17" screen. I came this close to making an impulse purchase at the Apple Store in Soho when I saw the 17" iMac, but my brother was able to talk me down :-) The iMac is real pretty, but the eMac has everything that I need at almost half the price ($1049 vs $1999). I did end up making one impulse buy though - an iPod. But, I blame that on MarkD since he slyly let me use his while he was visiting last weekend. I have no question that he’s getting a kickback somehow :-)