Le Big Mac

Ok, this is going to make me look like the world's biggest hypocrite...but yesterday evening I spotted an advert on Gumtree for something I've been thinking about getting for a while; even more so since I started with the whole photography thing. I rang the number, chatted with the seller for a bit and then agreed to go and have a look. I was impressed with what I saw at first and was maybe slightly blinded by the whole 'image' thing associated with the object...and with hindsight I'm not sure that I did the right thing by purchasing it. Sure, it's pimped out with extra technical gubbins that clearly aren't standard...but upon getting it home and inspecting it closer I've discovered that it's actually a little tatty and the 'L' key requires slightly more attention than the other keys when typing.

What am I on about? Well...I went and bought a used Macbook. It's a few years old and suffers from 'light wear and tear': namely the palm rest has the usual 'broken off' edges around the bottom and sides and the case itself has a few cracks and scuffs here and there...oh, and the fan gets a bit tasty when there are more than a few applications running at once. Overall I'm quite impressed by it, but still I'm not overly convinced that I should have just spent a bit more on a brand new one. Only time will tell I guess.

Having dabbled with macs extensively over the years (going back to the old LC III I convinced my mum to buy way back in the mid nineties), I'm pretty au fay with the various iterations of Mac OS X and this one came with Snow Leopard already installed so I've been having a bit of a play around. I'm liking the App Store and the new updated iTunes layout, and I've found it relatively easy to set up new user accounts etc...I just can't help but feel a little let down by the condition of the casing. I didn't really know anything about the whole 'brittle body' Macbook thing until I bought this one (I'm writing this on it now), but it seems to be a common fault having looked around the various forums. Weird. But anyway, it doesn't affect the running of the Macbook itself, so I guess I should just stop wingeing. 

So – the specs. Well, it's a white Macbook from around 2008 I'd say. It has 4GB of ram and a 500GB (not standard) hard disk. As I said earlier, it's got Snow Leopard on it and all of the applications and free software (GIMP, Chrome, OpenOffice etc) seem to run just fine, as does the bluetooth, wifi etc. I paid £340 for it, which is a damned sight cheaper than pretty much every other Macbook I've seen either on eBay or Gumtree and the guy who sold it to me seemed fairly genuine and happy to show me all the features and let me have a play around before I handed over any cash. Like I said, I'm still undecided as to whether I actually got a bargain yet (what with the cosmetic issues, and the inability to upgrade to Mountain Lion), but again I got it for a relative steal compared to what many other used Macbooks go for. Ultimately, it will replace my HP Pavilion laptop which my brother has expressed an interest in...I just hope I haven't just wasted a fuck load of cash. On the plus side, it does look fucking cool and it has a remote control to switch music tracks and movies and shit in Front Row. Now all that I need to do is sit in the window of a Starbucks and look like an absolute twat while using it.