I did it! I bought a PowerBook!

I’M OFFICIALLY A MAC PERSON!!! :)

Dave, are you seeing this? Are you reading this? Washington may not be able to come close to beating USC in football, but you, my friend, have triumphed on this one, at long last. :) And Dane, of course, also deserves credit for keeping up the Kreutz legacy by further inculcating me with Mac propaganda and nerdiness in recent years.

Anyway, I just made the fateful click a few moments ago. I bought a 12-inch, 1GHz PowerBook with an 80GB hard drive and 256 MB of RAM. (I fully intend to upgrade the memory eventually, but I found a site with the right kind of DIMM expansion card, considerably cheaper than Apple was selling it for.) I considered the 15-inch model, but in the end, cost issues entirely aside, I want the smaller one — the small, lightweight nature of the Mac laptops is one of the reasons I love them.

My computer will have an AirPort Extreme card (Wireless-G) and a Bluetooth adapter… and yes, Dane, I bought the wireless Bluetooth keyboard, but not an Apple mouse. I would never buy an Apple mouse. :) And I’m very psyched about getting 67% off Final Cut Express! You can expect more movie masterpieces like “Butter Baggins” in the future. :)

Thank goodness for the Notre Dame student discount that made this possible. Whoever it was that mentioned something in passing about the possibility of me getting a discount for being an admitted law student, you are my new hero!!! I saved something like $200-250 with that deal. The student discount brought the total cost under $2,000. Even with all the extras — including Office and Final Cut Express (but NOT the AppleCare Protection Plan; I decided against that) — the total cost was $1,929.05, which isn’t bad at all considering two days ago I was expecting to spend $1,700 on an iBook with 200 fewer gigahertz, 20 fewer gigabyes on the hard drive, and no Office software.

Thanks for your advice, everybody! It was very helpful. Keri, you should know, your comment was the snowflake that started the avalanche producing my change of heart from iBook to PowerBook. :)

Now I want to buy laptop insurance. Any suggestions?

UPDATE: Well, under $2,000 before taxes. Just looked at the final total: $2,079. Well, that’s still a couple hundred less than I paid (er, my parents paid) for my Dell laptop in 2000… and this is a far superior machine.

Now comes the fun part: making six “easy payments” of $350 per month so that I won’t ever have to pay a dime of interest (it’s six-months-same-as-cash if I do this), and so I’ll have the thing paid off by July… so I can start thinking about a car. :)

I guess this means I have to stay employed, eh?

ANOTHER UPDATE: It occurs to me, this is by far the most expensive and significant item that I have ever bought for myself, with my own money (well, with MBNA’s borrowed money, but eventually it will be paid for with my own money, dammit). It easily surpasses my two previous biggest purhcases, my current Canon digital camera and its Fuji predecessor. Ah, adulthood. “I went away to work and you bought a Mac!” (inside family joke)

Chris: “Intellectually, I understand why I should want Cal to beat Virginia Tech tonight in the Best Buy Surge Protector Bowl presented by Toshiba.” LOL!!! (They did, by the way. In a thriller, no less.)

Tomorrow promises to be a marathon travel day for me. I plan to arrive at the airport at least 2 1/2 hours early, around 7:00 or 7:15 AM, for my flight from Phoenix to Washington (America West #44). The flight departs at 9:45 AM Mountain time, and arrives at Reagan National Airport at 3:52 PM Eastern time. From there, I hop on the Metrorail to Washington’s Union Station, then take a quick cab ride to the D.C. Greyhound station, from which I am scheduled to depart at 7:00 PM on a bus to New York. (I may be able to get on an earlier bus if I arrive early enough.) That bus is set to arrive in NYC at 11:45 PM, whereupon I will take the familiar “A” subway from the Port Authority (42nd St.) to the family’s apartment (190th St.). Barring a change in bus schedule, I’ll probably be arriving around 1:00 AM.

In case you’re wondering, the reason I’m not just flying into New York is that I, like all the Zak siblings and sibling-significant-others, was generously given (by Becky’s parents) round-trip tickets to and from D.C. for Becky’s cousin’s wedding (which is on Jan. 3). I moved my eastbound ticket back a few days earlier so that I could go home and visit my family first, but the tix stll have to be round trip in and out of D.C. So I’ll be home in New York/Connecticut for three full days, and then I head back down to the nation’s capital on Dec. 31. I’ll be with Becky there on New Year’s, and for the Rose Bowl.

Hmm… the nation is on Orange Alert and I’m taking airplanes, buses, and subways… and spending most of the next week and a half in either New York or Washington!! But hey, that’s what you call “not letting the terrorists win.”

Wish me luck!

UPDATE: As you can see, I’ve changed the blog time zone to Eastern. It will remain so through Jan. 4.

I’m just posting this from the Apple Store because I want to test how it feels to use the keyboard of this 12-inch PowerBook.

Not bad. Not divine, but I wouldn’t expect any laptop to be divine. Hence my love of external keyboards. :) But, not bad.

Lalalala type type type I love Becky blah blah blah blah

UPDATE: Now I’m testing the 15″ PowerBook to see if it’s any more comfortable. Well… yeah, a little bit. But, hmm. I don’t know if the difference is worth it. The main advantage of the 15″ model is that, for not too much more money, I could walk out of the store with most of the features that I want in terms of hard drive space, high-speed wireless, etc. But I think I’m going to go home and deliberate on this some more. Hmm… the keyboard is nicer, though…

UPDATE: Now I’m over at the 12″ iBook testing out its keyboard. Pretty much the same as the 12″ PowerBook. As Keri said in comments, I think I’d get used to it. I mean, hey, I type on Becky’s iBook. It’s not my favorite, but I’d buy a keyboard and hook it up for use when I’m at home, and when I’m on the go, I’d deal. :)

I can’t actually buy anything here at the store anyway, because I need proof of my Notre Dame status. I think there may be a way around that online, so we’ll find out tonight. Otherwise I may be back here at the crack of dawn before my flight leaves tomorrow… though that would depend on when the store opens and when my flight leaves…