Sunday, July 19, 2009

Trying Something New


My beloved MacBook has been ill lately - trouble with the fan. When I last took it to the Apple Genius Bar, I was told yes, it does need a new fan, but not right away.

The other night after about an hour of use, it got REALLY hot and shut down before damage was done to any of the inner workings. Which is a really nice selling point of the MacBook. However, it makes any sustained periods of work impossible. I need to take Annie (my MacBook is named after a jaguar at EFBC/FCC and yes, I name just about ALL of the important appliances/cars/surfboards in my life) back to the Apple Store and have the fan replaced. Thankfully under warranty. I intend to do so Monday.

In the meantime, I've been using Annie for short bursts of online activity, keeping careful watch on the heat emanating from her while doing so. For my writing, I've started using my NEO Alphasmart (loaned to me by one of my best buddies, writing partners and amazing horror author T. Chris Martindale - if you want to read a scary book, pick up WHERE THE CHILL WAITS and if you're a fan of Paul F. Wilson's REPAIRMAN JACK series, read Martindale's Stoker award nominated book NIGHTBLOOD), and..

I love my NEO.

You can choose font size to have 3, 4, 5 or 6 lines of text on the display window. You can't see a whole page and constantly second-guess yourself the way you can with a regular computer, so it's somehow easier to just ... well ... write.

So I've gone from full on panic mode at the thought of being without my beloved Annie to a calm 'I can do this' attitude, knowing I can work on my WIP on NEO and probably accomplish a lot while Annie is in for her 'operation.'

Thank you, T.C.!

4 comments:

Adele said...

I name all my stuff too. :)

Elizabeth Spann Craig said...

Good luck getting the fan replaced. Hope that will be the end of your problems with the laptop.

Elizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder

Dana Fredsti said...

Adele, I am somehow not surprised! :-)

Thanks, Elizabeth. I hope so too!

elysabeth said...

cool posting. I participate in NaNo somewhat and this Neo Alphasmart is one of the items recommended for folks who don't have a laptop or just really need something with a long battery life. Speaking of which, what's the battery life? Can it be used both ways - electric or battery? Is it more of a word processor or are there other features that can be utilized with the NEO? Curious minds want to know - E :)

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Elysabeth Eldering
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