FROMONLINE | 2012-09-09

  • By Tami Lange
  • September 9, 2012
  • 329
                        
This column marks an end of sorts – and a bittersweet one at that. This, I must confess, is the last column I will ever write on my IBM Thinkpad, my laptop companion of the last six years. We’ve had some good times, ThinkPad and I, since I bought her (refurbished) from the local computer store. She is my second ThinkPad and she’s outlasted most of the family’s other computers. Once the prettiest and fastest gal on the block, she has been outpaced by Nipper’s iPad, my Kindle Fire and whatever Husband has in the inner sanctum of his office/ laundry room. Many a night she’s sat on my lap, leading me from site to site in search of column ideas, cruising through the Home & Garden section of the New York Times online, obsessively checking Progress Book for the Nipper’s latest grades and homework assignments, attaching resumes in e-mails to prospective employers and posting the occasional status update on Facebook. She’s been on business trips, in the office and occasionally out for a road trip. But she’s mostly happy at home, on a padded stool next to the living room couch. But in the past several months, our bliss has gone. She’s increasingly cranky and moving at glacial speed, frequently felled by viruses and information overflow. In the meantime, the need for a faster workmate has increased, as I’ve taken on new projects that require bigger, badder spreadsheets and the downloading of more software than the old gal can shoulder. So, after completing a week or so of due diligence, I found her replacement yesterday. The New Girl ain’t all that pretty, but in the computer world, she’s a work horse – lots of speed, lots of storage, lots of everything. Poor Thinkpad can’t even begin to compete. Yet there’s a sadness in letting the old gal go (though she’s actually being put in the closet as a now faithful back up). We knew each other so well – like an old married couple – and working with her was like putting on a pair of well worn running shoes. Such is the march of time and of progress. Unlike the appliances of yesteryear, today’s electronics are built for planned obsolescence. The man in line next to me was upgrading his smartphone, even though the one he was replacing couldn’t have been more than two years old. I like the idea of making stuff last, but I have to confess that new phone looked mighty sweet. “Tell you dad that mom wants one of those for Christmas,” I told Nipper, who was too busy looking at the new generation of digital cameras to listen. It’s sad, I think, that life in the new millennium seems so fleeting. My parents had the same refrigerator (a used one my grandmother gave them) for my entire childhood and young adulthood. Same was true of the washer-dryer, the range and a waffle maker my mother insists still works as well as the day it was manufactured (I’m guessing some time in the late 1940s). Still, when I run my fingers over my new laptop, when I watch how quickly she downloads, when I marvel at her high resolution screen, Lord help me, I find myself a bit giddy. Maybe she won’t help me write great columns, but by golly, I’ll write a decent column faster. And then I can always go make waffles.


Loading next article...

End of content

No more pages to load