Flashes of Panic

I seriously torqued my Powerbook last night. I managed to set up my Eclipse configuration correctly to import the source for Sakai as a series of projects, so I saw the load on the machine (roughly defined as the average number of processes queued for execution) hold in the 3+ range for more than five minutes. Running Java, and particularly big operations in Eclipse, tends to bog it down.

I’ve been pretty closely attached to this machine over the last few months, which probably comes as no surprise. I’ve been loading it down with tools to do my work, and pretty much living on it. It’s “only” two and a half years old, but it’s beginning to show some age, and the degree to which it labors with Java is probably related. I did put in a new keyboard, new optical drive, and a lot of RAM last June, which means it’s probably good for a while yet. But it doesn’t feel like a sharp, new tool; it feels more like the old wrench with nicks around all the edges, the one which just doesn’t break no matter how much you use it as a hammer.

After this week, I think ultimately this machine will be replaced by one of the inelegantly named MacBook Pros. The speed bump is cool, and since most of the non-standard tools I play with are either installed from source (and therefore compiled for the platform) or bytecode-reliant (i.e. Java tools reliant on the JVM,) I don’t think I’ll spend much time bogged down in PPC emulation (as I would, say, if I used Photoshop all the time.) However, I’m waiting for a few things. For one, I’m not interested in being an unpaid beta tester for version 1.0 hardware. For another, though, I’ve become quite fond of the 12” size. I like having a laptop that’s smaller than most casebound textbooks; I lug it around far too much to want it to get any heavier.

So I’ll be hanging on to the old war-horse a bit longer.

Now Playing: Runaway Train from Grave Dancers Union by Soul Asylum