The time has finally come.  There is no alternative.  This morning, my Mac refused to turn on at all.  It has been temperamental for a while now, taking a good hour or so to ‘warm up’ before booting into the operating system, but so far this morning the computer has been on for two hours and still no life.  I have checked and reseated the RAM, and that’s not made any difference, which narrows it down to the processor - apparently it only needs the processor and the RAM to produce the startup chime.  Admittedly the processor is a third-party upgrade, put on before I bought the computer, enhancing it from a pokey 450MHz to a more respectable 1GHz.  Still, without the original processor to put back in my options are limited, so I’m now looking on eBay for a new Mac.

It’s a shame, because my little Blue&White G3 has done me very well so far, marching boldly onwards when technology everywhere else is being retired in favour of newer models.  Tiger runs very nicely on 1GHz, and even copes admirably with running a dozen applications at the same time, including the entire Adobe CreativeSuite!  I’ve thrown so much at my poor computer, and I guess the time has finally come for it to throw the towel in and call it a day.

I’m now looking at buying a Mac Mini.  On the one hand, a conventional G4 PowerMac might be more suitable, in that it has more potential for upgrading, but since I’ve not really had to upgrade my B&W I’m not sure that’s quite as much of an issue.  The Mac Mini also has a much greater cool-factor.

So for now I’m stuck using my old PC, which has been dragged out for today so that I can at least make some attempt at doing something productive.  Hopefully I’ll get a replacement Mac very soon, and I’ll be back online soon.  Then the fun part begins, setting up my computer again, installing programs, tweaking stuff to my liking.  Watch this space…