Howdydoody to you, precious reader, who made the bold decision to
read another chapter of this increasingly irreverent little niche of
online literature (only in the sense that it's made of letters and
words: I don't proclaim this to be art or anything snotty like
that).
All weekend I lived through an experience me and my poor partner
(she really is to be commended for being such a hardy soul) never made
before: We were desperately trying to spend 1,300 pounds on a computer
(or to be correct: the incredibly 
sexy DVD iBook).
As I work in a rather remote part of Scotland where Apple retailers
are rather scarce (one in 4,000 square miles), I used a little business
trip to London on the weekend to get me that piece of equipment I
longed for for over three months. To my astonishment, every retailer I
went to was very eager to sell my the CombiDrive or CD-ROM iBook, but
every request for the DVD-ROM issue was either greeted with hollow
laughter, a certain unbelieving facial expression or just plain tears.
Apparently there is no DVD iBook in the whole of London, and nobody
knew when there were any more coming in.
One bloke was trying to flog off one of his ex-demo models that had
been standing for weeks in the shop window, but he was not ready to
either go down with the price or throw something in with the machine.
No way, Jose.
After more than 24 hours of unsuccessful walking around the streets
of London during the worst heat wave for a decade, something snapped in
me: I had to have a bloody iBook for my flight back to Scotland, and by
golly, I was going to get one - so I bought the CD-ROM Version. DVD
movies are overrated anyway, and I saved a couple of hundred quid, even
though I whacked a cool 128 MB extra in it.
So this is what it's like: I am sitting here on my flight from
London to Scotland with my new gorgeous iBook strategically placed on
my lap. Very much to the envy of my co-passengers (har, har) I am able
to type away happily to bring you my first impression of this thinking
man's ultimate gadget. The first couple of minutes have certainly been
very enjoyable: After installing Mac OS 9.1 and OS X 10.0.3, I
still had enough battery life for another 90 minutes (thanks for
preloading the battery, guys). The display proved to be beautifully
crisp and well designed, and the keyboard has a good feel to it.
Using 9.1, the desktop looked familiar, with the software bundle
pretty exhaustive. I always wanted to get my hands on AppleWorks 6, and
I can vouchsafe for its good design and great handling. The mouse pad
(or whatever it's called) is pretty difficult to use if you're a
hard-core mouse user like me, but I'm sure I'll get there. Don't know
how it will work for my Total Annihilation addiction, though.
As soon's as I'm home, I'll copy my graphic and Web design
applications onto it and see how this baby breezes through my Photoshop
jobs. Now that I am an ecstatic person with the plane about to descend
onto the west coast of Scotland, the only thing that is left for me to
do is a) remind you again of the biggest hacker convention in Europe ,
HAL2001, where I'll be hosting a session on Health and the Net and b)
ask you kindly to email me your experiences in trying to get hold of an
iBook.
Cheers me Dears. 
