Well, I ordered a new computer

[thewayne]

Did it New Year's Day. A brand-new 27" iMac, top of the line, 4 GHz i7 with 16 gig of RAM, 3 TB hybrid drive, and AppleCare. Should be here next week. Don't ask the price, it's kinda painful (I did get an education discount), but I expect many years of service out of it making the cost per day more bearable (just the sales tax was over $200, at least the shipping was free). Insurance is paying for most of it, I'll be out about $750, which hurts being unemployed but it will definitely help my sanity, which has really taken a hit. Plus eventually I'll need to drop $80 for an external DVD R/W drive, I can borrow the one that I bought for my wife occasionally, but not permanently.

I don't understand why, but it was less expensive than going with the middle line computer with the same features. Very odd.

I caught an upgrade sale on Parallels, so I'll be able to run Windows 10 on the new box, so that'll be good. I also bought DxO's FilmPack Elite on sale. I'm really looking forward to working with this! While I could install it on my laptop, I just don't feel like working with this for the first time on a 15" screen. I'll wait for my 5K 27" display. I wanted to buy the entire DxO software suite, but it was more money than I'm capable of dropping right now. I was quite pleased when my credit card company sent me an email saying "Excuse me! We just noticed an unusually large charge!" Fortunately all I had to do was click on a button embedded in the email.

Speaking of laptops, mine has been giving me fits. It has been doing kernel panics almost daily. I bought an extended warranty, so once the new iMac arrives, I'll be shipping it off to Phoenix to get MacMedia to do something about it. After refreshing the backup, of course.

Speaking of other laptops, my wife's new laptop was slightly goofy on January 1. She tried running World of Warcraft and the graphics were absolutely horrible. Very weird, there were strange blue polygons like icebergs in the foreground that persisted with rescaling the game window. She remembered me telling her an old story involving the Mac/Unix command UPTIME: turns out the computer had been running just shy of 50 days. She rebooted it, problem went away.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Was it a custom config? If so, you'll be in the fun position of being able to track it worldwide as it winds its merry way across the globe. ^_^; Frustratingly, as I bought Hazel and the iPad using 0% financing, for some reason, Apple wouldn't deliver just the AirPort and iPad Air - they mandate everything must be delivered in one bundle, and the customisation (bumped the storage up to a 1TB SSD) caused something like a ten day delay. =:P

I've sort of bounced between VMware and Parallels. There's not a huge amount to choose between them, these days, but ISTR Fusion cost me something like £25 last year, which wasn't bad.

If I ever actually get the space, I wouldn't mind a nice 4K or 5K display (or two) - for now, it wouldn't really be easily practical, with nowhere really to put it, short of maybe a VESA arm on the side of the dresser. ^_^;

If she likes WoW, she might like giving SL a try. It's much less of a game, though, which catches out a lot of people - there aren't any goals per se, unless you want there to be, like hooking up with an RPG group. But there's nigh endless customisation available - not just the few species in WoW, but almost anything you can imagine. (And if you want to be something that really isn't available yet, you can make and sell it. Or indeed, give it away - I think Uchi Desmoulin's erstwhile Kani av, the one I normally use, remains free for all. Most new furry avs run around the L$800 mark, or a little over US$3)

Maybe even see you there someday? ^_^

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The CPU and hard drive were upgrades, as was going with the trackpad instead of the mouse. I'm not a fan of Apple mice. I checked my order status this morning and they're prepping for shipping, so I expect it to ship tomorrow, which will hopefully mean it will arrive early/mid next week, which will pretty much be dead-on the original arrival estimate.

The new Apple Store app lets you track orders now, which is all sorts of awesome!

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I know very little about SL, I do understand that it's much more a social club than a combat/exploration game. I don't think it would be a good fit for my wife, she likes the discovery/combat aspects of WoW. I think it's a stress relief for her. She enjoys the challenge and finding the amusing hidden things. We don't play in groups, it's usually just the two of us. We were in a guild that I helped form and that I named. It was a casual guild, then with no warning, one of the other founders kicked my wife out. There was no way I could stay, the guild didn't last too long afterwards, and that wiped out our main online social group.

For me, it's a question of free time. I need to get some structure in to my life and add some skills to try to increase my employability, and I don't think adding computer recreation is going to fit in right now.