The computer situation progresses...

We went to CompUSA on the other side of town to play with Powerbooks. While I pounded on the laptop keyboards trying to figure out what wouldn't cripple me, Adam busied himself torturing desktops.

Here's the thing: he's a PC guy. He's always been a PC guy. The old Mac I ran in college was nearly a deal-breaker, he's so hardcore PC. He was dragging his feet about going to play with the Macs, spouting off the anti-Mac rhetoric that they teach in Intro to Computer Science. "You just want it because of the iPod. You're just freaking out because they're switching you to PCs at work. You're being a big baby. PCs are cheaper. You don't really want a Mac."

Uh-huh.

Imagine my surprise when I looked up from the notebook I was testing and saw my dear husband the PC-lover playing with the new G5 iMac. The really groovy G5 iMac with the 20" flat screen with the computer built right in, so it's all monitor, keyboard and mouse, baby. The platonic ideal of computer. My secret boyfriend computer. That computer. I slid up next to him. "This," he said after a minute of fooling around. "This is awesome. And it's so cheap! It's only $1,700! We should get one. But look at this!"

And he dragged me over to the Mac Mini. "Look at this!" he crowed. "Look at how fast it opens Firefox! And iTunes! And look at the cool little animated menu! And it's so tiny! I want one! We've already got the monitor! It'd make a great replacement for the office computer!"

This would be the dead computer that's been decomposing in the office upstairs for the better part of two years.

He will deny that he showed any enthusiasm, but I assure you, he's seen the light. He's already refering to the dead lappy as the garage lappy and urging me to skip the 12" Powerbook I like for the beefier 15" Powerbook. ("With backlit keyboard!")

But maybe it wasn't a permanent conversion. He spent the afternoon fixing the decomposing office computer and reports it's now up and running on a leaned-out version of Windows and fit for word processing. The new hard drive for my old laptop's due to be delivered on Thursday or Friday. And I would have to parcel out payments for any new computer over the next couple of years, which kind of sucks.

I don't know what's going to happen. I'll keep you posted.