Machine speculation

It was the beginning of this year when the new Intel MacBook Pro made it into the Apple Store for pre-ordering that the Pavlovian drooling commenced. My wife, Miller, in her prudent fashion, suggested I wait six months before upgrading my 500 MHz TiBook. Partially, it's because she wants to make sure I'm not just infatuated with the new technogadget-of-the-month. I, on the other hand, was sufficiently sure that I've already purchased Parallels, but her logic also made sense otherwise. Whereas a new product line may have certain problems endemic to it, six months is probably a good length of time to see if they crop up. Also, I am wondering whether WWDC '06 will hold some more product releases in store. If they announce better MacBooks, it will have been worth the wait. If they announce other hardware, like a more standard desktop, it won't be that great for me personally, though I suppose it might be possible that it would drive the prices down on the MacBooks. Unlikely, but possible.

In any case, I'm still crankin' away on my TiBook. I miss the (relative) speediness of the CodeWarrior builds, where even on this old boy I could crank out a set of Mac Office builds overnight. Now it takes longer than that to crank out one flavor of one architecture. I no longer really use it for mainline development work for that reason. All that said, and though I'll be happy to finally purchase an Intel-based Mac and see some dramatic speed improvements, I'll be sort of sad to put this old workhorse to rest. The keyboard keys have all gotten shiny with extended use. The Moby sticker to the left of my touch pad has long outlived its earlier counterpart on my old Duo 280, and I'll have to seek out an appropriate replacement.

Speaking of my Duo 280, is there anything I could do to replace a cracked screen at this point, or should I relegate it to the junk heap? I've still got an old Duo Dock in my office, though at this point, all it's doing is supporting my Intel iMac so the screen height is more ergonomically correct. One of my non-tech-geek friends made the point over the weekend that all these old machines are just adding to the already considerable clutter in our house. We got into a spirited debate over whether to keep random extra, usually defunct or obsolete, tech gear around. At some point I used the word "shrine" and the discussion fizzled. Anyhow, I think having a working Duo 280 is worth keeping, but probably not a irreparable one. I'm afraid to pull my SE/30 out of the closet and see whether it'll still go. I don't want to have to turn it into a fish tank just to have a reason to save it.