Pleonastic Ephemera

10.08.2003 posted by William 18:37 link

I was sitting on a bench in Union Sq Park, taking advantage of one of the dwindling number of warm weather days left in the year. I brought the PowerBook but the public network, run by Emenity, wasn't working -- I could get to a page that asked me to agree to their terms to use the network, but after that, nothing. The feeling of frustrated impotency this brought reminded me of back in the day when major web sites would sometimes go down for hours or even days for no apparent reason. I guess that's what one should expect when one dances on the bleeding edge, but, c'mon, wifi is hardly bleeding edge -- it's been big for a couple of years now, and these free networks are nothing new. Despite the disappointment, it was still cool to use the machine outside of the apartment -- outside, period, for that matter. It's a first for me. The truth is that for most of the year -- October through April, with a few exceptions -- I'm sure that the only place I'll use it will be in the apartment, the same place I would be using the desktop with a faster processor, more memory, bigger hard drive, and larger display I could have bought for the same money. Isn't a laptop something of an extravagant waste, then? I suspected not and my suspicions are echoed by this guy over at Ars Technica, whose situation is almost identical to mine: a lifelong desktop user who just purchased a PowerBook but will probably use it mostly at home. In fact, he customized his PowerBook in exactly the same ways I did: 1 ghz processor, 80 gig disk, combo but not super drive, etc. His review is as illuminating as our backlit keyboards, though I feel kinda sorry for him in that it sounds like his perfectionism borders on OCD. As far as all the problems he mentions with reluctant latches and stuck pixels, well, I guess I got lucky because, aside from the ubiquitous gap issue, my machine seems to be one of the few, the proud, the perfect. Random park fauna seemed to share my affection for the new PowerBook -- two ants, in separate incidents, tumbled from the branches above onto the trackpad, a few gnats alighted on the screen, and squirrels kept darting between and around my feet. I was afraid that at any second, a pigeon would deposit a load on the keyboard in a horribly misguided attempt to signal its approval. Don't worry, my tendency to write about the PowerBook is sure to diminish over time as it works its way into my normal consciousness and I learn to take it for granted. Update: I actually wrote this as a text document while sitting here in the park, just figuring I'd post it once I got home, but another network has appeared that is different from the other one in that it does what it is supposed to do, so I can upload it now. Thanks, 105East16ST, for making my day complete.