So here’s the current state of the Weather Station computer systems.
1. iMac G5, my workhorse, is starting to fade. I have that blue line on the monitor, and the fan is getting louder and louder. Now that my financial circumstances have changed, I believe I will treat myself to a new iMac by the end of the year. I like that big 27-incher, but I’ll probably go with the 21.5.
2. Power Mac G4, my new audio unit. The noisy iMac is no good good for recording audio, so I bought today a banged-up Power Mac tower. It’s that odd blue-grey colour they came out with between the green version and the silver model. So far, so good; I have it hooked up to a 17-inch flatpanel, and it’s a quick, basic machine; once I add some of this RAM that seems to be lying around my lab, I’ll have it humming.. Just right for Cubase, MixPad, Levelator, Audacity and GarageBand. Plus, its hard drive had a few hundred songs on it, mostly classic American rock and the Arctic Monkeys.
3. The Netbook. My Compaq goes where I go, and is a quick, snappy way to get online, write, edit photos or even record field audio. Heck of a gizmo; I can’t remember what it was like to not have it.
4. The Vista PC. Another Compaq, this one now lives upstairs in Mrs. Weathereye’s newly equipped home office. I still have my iPod synched to it because I haven’t had time to manually move 100 gb of music down to the basement. I plan to devote the G4 to my music files.
5. The Old Man: my 2002-ish Compaq Evo laptop remains a trusty, battle-ready laptop; right now it’s set up with an emulator and my kids use it for old Sega Genesis and arcade games. Still my favourite Windows computer, ever.
6. The Fat Little iMac: I bought this today for twenty bucks; it’s an early-generation iMac, Bondi blue, with a 6 gig hard drive, running OS 9. I haven’t played with OS 9 in years, and I’m having fun with this lightning-quick little computer. Eventually, I’ll probably make it into a fishtank.
7. The Other Compaq: My son has a Windows XP machine in his room. It has trouble accessing our wireless network, so it doesn’t get a lot of use, but it’s a solid, basic home computer.
8. The Graveyard: my workshop is full of monitors, keyboards and assorted parts from a variety of old computers. I’m working on a robot, hopefully one that transforms into a tank.
Weather Station 1 