It's been three months since I've written for Low End Mac, and the
MacBook I reviewed in my last
column is long gone, regretfully. Since then I've gone through four
computers to get where I am today - three of them running Windows.
At times, I became indifferent to the Mac. I still posted on Mac
forums like I didn't have a life, but I was happy with my ThinkPads and
even built a quad-core Q6600 gaming rig - until I decided I needed a
file server.
Like any self-respecting Windows geek would, I went over to NewEgg to
configure my system. It was late at night, and I was pretty tired. Out
of sheer sugar-crash-fueled inattentiveness, I flicked over to a
different tab in my browser. Lo and behold, what should appear but the
main page of a Mac forum I had open? A thread caught the corner of my
eye. It advertised a "heavily upgraded Power Mac G4 with RAID".
"Hmm," I thought. "This might make an okay file server, but shipping
would be preposterous!"
It turned out that the guy who was selling it lived 10 miles away
from me!
I raced over the next day to check it out and bought it. For $350, I
ended up getting a Sawtooth upgraded to 1.4 GHz
with 1.5 GB RAM, dual 160 GB hard drives in RAID 0, AirPort, and a 256
MB GeForce 6200 graphics
card.
This was geek heaven, especially for me. I'd always had a soft spot
for the G4s, having owned more than 10 in the past, but none as
souped-up as this one. Another advantage was the fact that it came with
boxed copies of Leopard, iLife, Virtual PC, and Windows 98!
I'm sure I was
so eager to get home that the car I was in looked like something out of
Need for Speed: Most Wanted the way it was driving.
I've stuck some more hard drives (it's become the dumping ground for
any IDE hard drives I find lying around) and RAM in it, and it's
chompin' at the bit to start serving - when I'm done using it, that
is!
So what's happened to my Q6600 rig? Well, it sits on my desk, uses
500W of power, looks pretty, glows blue, and kindly doesn't crash when
I'm trying to write something.
Why am I not using the G4, you ask? It's currently halfway through
being modded (not tellin' ya!) and will be put back into service
shortly.
I've just posted my Q6600 rig on Craigslist, because I want to try
my hand at the MacBook again!
It's truly amazing how a 9-year-old machine can pull me away from
being hopelesly entangled in a pile of jagged, broken Windows.
Benjamin Zalutsky is a recent Mac convert.
