POWERBOOK G4 yes you read it right! I am the proud owner of a brand new spanking refurbrished Powerbook G4 with 2 years of Guarantee! It all happened in a tizzy this day! I was in Aachen with the Namesake, when we went to the Media Markt. He was the first to notice and bring to my attention, the Powerbook on display. Now this one was marked down TREMENDOUSLY from its market value, and it seemed to be working just great! I could not take my eyes off it. More I looked, the more I got convinced that this was a deal NOT To be missed.

The only downside to a Powerbook is the PPC based OS, and no support after Leopard. But all that I couldn’t care two figs about. The laptop is just screaming awesome. I cogitated a while and then decided to take the plunge. Though I am trying to save money, this just did not seem like an opportunity that should be given up! I mean NO pixel failures, and everything working exactly per spec. The battery giving nearly 5 hours of backup on a normal charge, not to mention just how COOL these Powerbooks run in comparison to MBPs which are just abhorrable when it comes to battery life etc. In the end, I had a toss up between this and a MB, and one look and feel of the MB keyboard and I was sold to Powerbook. It is nearly just the most amazing laptop series ever!

MB’s keys are just too clunky and chicklet-y. I simply cannot understand how people can like that kind of a keyboard. I tried to write a few sentences on it, and failed miserably. The keys are too far apart and it just looks like cheap plastic. The titanium/alu finish of a Powerbook/MBP is unmistakably superior. Once though I had decided that it would be a MBP or nothing for me, the decision for  Powerbook was just a natural next step! I bought the baby!

And now it waits for Tiger to get reinstalled on it, which I shall undertake on Friday after buying some more RAM for it. So it is back to Aachen. A side-note, I was astonished by how Expensive it is buying RAM directly from Apple. A single RAM DIMM costs 330 EUR for 1 GB, while one can buy the same configuration from Bora for 49 EUR. Unbelievable really.

I am just so excited about my purchase and it is so darned difficult keeping my hands away from the PB, but I shall wait till Friday till I tinker with it, after having replaced the RAM.

The trip to Aachen was great as always and we found this pub, right next to the Dom, called the "Dom Keller" which was quite a different experience. We went to all the regular haunts in Aachen, Berlin Grill, Glaskubus, Pallas and then rounding it all off with a coffee at "Moelkerei".  The namesake and I had a lot of fun, and we look forward to going there again soon!

It was just so beautiful when my beloved called me as de Jong and I were sitting in Pallas. It was so amazing to hear her voice in a place I used to frequent so much, and used to be my home. No wonder I was jumping with excitement when I took my love to Aachen to show her around… couldn’t stop snapping pictures of her as she walked through the city I once called home. God I can’t wait till July when I can be with her once again. Now that the formalities are through and my documents are with me again, it shall indeed be a matter of time, why I could fly there tomorrow if I so felt like! :D

Sabine was so nice, mailing, to tell me we’d book my flights on Monday! So inderdaad something great to look forward to, at work on Monday.

What a day indeed! It has been three since I last updated the blog, mostly spending this time looking for good blogging alternatives. Qumana actually turned out to be the panacea here. I know I complained a lot about having used Qumana and it crashing my OSX installation, but there are a few workarounds that I didn’t know of then. Simply choosing a Blog Category before you start blogging will ensure that Qumana doesn’t crash!

So I have been using gSync of late to syncronize iCal with gCal. I am very elated to report that it works flawlessly! It is superior to gCalDaemon which though I managed to install without a problem, did have significant delays in updating both calendars… sometimes not updating at all! So tip of the day is gSync – it is a free evaluation for the time being while the software is still in beta. Great work guys!

I also managed to find a replacement for MSMoney! It is called iBank (very original) and works quite well. Though not as powerful as MSMoney, it is a one stop solution for all your tracking needs. I am using the evaluation version 2.3 and might even consider purchasing the software. Let’s see!

Tim@17th@13:00