Apple is losin’ me

I have become somewhat of an Apple guy. From a cool perspective, both my CD’s were recorded on Mac’s. From a geek perspective, it had me a “terminal window”.

So the last two large computer purchases have been Apple laptops. I even used an iMac as my main computer at work for a few months. And we have 2 iPhones and about 6 iPods.

I loved my iBook. It’s still in use by my mother-in-law.

My Macbook has been a different story. The hard drive crashed. The CD/DVD drive has slowly degraded until it stopped working entirely. The rubber feet came off. The keyboard stopped working and it was only some pleading by my wife at the Apple store that got it replaced. This all occurred in less than 2 years of very stationary use. It gets ridiculously hot. Discussions with other Macbook users have revealed some similar situations.

So in my opinion, OS X is completely superior to Windows. But Apple laptop hardware is currently junk.

So it was time to get my wife a new laptop. It needs to be small and reliable and easy to use. She loved her 12 inch powerbook but Apple does not make such a machine anymore. The closest thing is a Macbook air…but that’s $1700 bucks.

Enter the Asus Eee. It’s small, light, cheap ($350). It has 1 gig of ram, a 160 gig HD, a nice screen, a camera….it’s basically a small non-Apple Macbook. And for the money I can get 4 of these for the cost of one apple laptop.

The disadvantage? Windows. Ugh. But hey…I’ve made this stuff work before. In fact, I use it all day long.

So far I’m very very impressed. We’ll see how it holds up.

When it comes to computers and related equipment, too many companies have had to learn the hard way that taking refuge in the “high end” doesn’t work long term. With the economy taking a hit, Apple’s expensive but oh-so-cool machines may become odd man out. They certainly did for me.

The other thing is that Apple doesn’t seem to have plans for a netbook like the Eee. Even if they do, they’re already too late.