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This blog is where Matthew shares the nitty-gritty of what life is about, whether it be the optimal shade of tea, a review of a newly-released film, a passionate expose of theological doctrine, or just a rant about whatever is topical.

None of this blog should be taken seriously, unless otherwise indicated. The events described here and their real-life counterparts probably wouldn't get on at a party, so don't expect them to correlate easily.

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Stuff posted on 10th September 2007

Time for an upgrade

Yes, it’s finally reached the point where I’m thinking about upgrading my Mac.  I’ve had my Blue & White G3 for a couple of years now, and it has served me well so far.  It’s been reliable, fast (compared to my PC anyway), efficient, and of course drop-dead-gorgeous, but it’s finally beginning to show its age.

I bought it second hand on eBay, and it came already upgraded to include a 1GHz G4 processor, although the motherboard itself remained standard.  While the extra processor speed was useful, the rest has suffered from not having the benefits of the G4 motherboard, which has prohibited the use of more powerful graphics cards capable of the clever QuartzExtreme jobbies that really make OS X shine.  Neither does the G3 support Airport Extreme, as far as I am aware, which is the latest line of wireless connectivity addons that Apple has created to connect our Macs to the net.  At the moment I’m still using one of those old-fashioned CAT5 cables, which is so last decade.   The computer also only came with two 10GB hard disks, which was hardly sufficient, and they soon made way for a 250GB disk taken out of an external firewire drive.  Unfortunately the G3 motherboard doesn’t recognise anything that enormous, so I could only format half of that, but so far 128GB has been plenty for my needs.

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