kill vehicle

So, I have this laptop.

I like it, but it’s getting a little senile. I’ve had it for about three and a half years now, which means that in computer years it’s about 87. The case is getting creaky, the keyboard’s starting to wear, the battery is shot, and every now and then it just locks up hard for no apparent reason. It’s still fast enough for my purposes (mail, web crap, movies, games), though, and when it isn’t malfunctioning it’s an excellent machine.

All the same, I’ve been window-shopping a new laptop. I like shiny new things, and a new PowerBook is about as shiny as they come. Every now and then I’ll go to Apple’s online store, configure my ideal machine, check out the price, and look wistfully at the feature set. I’ll think, “Gosh, I kinda hate using Windows. It’ll be cool to play with OS X! I can’t wait until it’s time to buy one of these things!” and then go back to happily using my Thinkpad. It’s a pleasant way to pass time, like any sort of window shopping, and it lets me distract myself from the various annoyances of windows. Thinking “I bet a new PowerBook wouldn’t crash like that” while waiting for Windows to boot again after a hard lockup takes a little sting out of losing whatever I was working on.

Last night, though, my laptop shifted from “senile” to “not long for this world” — the screen started acting up, flickering and ghosting and distorting. It stopped after a while, but that can’t be a good sign. Laura’s old Sony laptop died the same way — the rest of the machine worked fine, but the display conked out and would have been stupidly expensive to fix.

Suddenly, the PowerBook switched from an idle window-shopping fantasy to a “maybe I’ll need to order this tomorrow” possibility. It’s a lot less fun this way. The features are still attractive, but I find myself cringing at the sticker price, worrying about whether I’ll be unhappy switching from the IBM 1400×1050 screen-of-love to the crisp-but-lower-resolution Apple 1280×854 display, unsure I’ll be able to deal with using a trackpad instead of a trackpoint. I’m dreading having to move all of my data over, configure a new machine, adapt to a new operating system’s quirks. I expected all of that, but it’s still not any fun.

What I didn’t expect, though, is a vague feeling of guilt about the whole process. I have this strange loyalty to my current laptop. Intellectually I know that it’s just a hunk of plastic and electronic components, but I’ve had it so long that it almost feels like I’m cheating on it by scoping out a new laptop.

It’s dumb. I work with computers all day. I understand their internals. I know perfectly well that they’re just machines. I scoff at people’s superstitions about how their computers “don’t like” or “don’t want to” do various things. Despite all that, I’m sitting here worried that I’ll somehow offend a chunk of electronics by upgrading to a newer model.

Modern middle-class consumer life is hard sometimes.