Thursday, 6/22

Say hello to my little friend--

That's right; I have a new laptop, and am presently in the process of transferring everything from the old machine to the new machine, which is actually one of the biggest joys there is in the world.

And, as always, it's a pity that sarcasm doesn't travel well in the written word.

My old laptop is now eight years old and, like all eight year old machines, is starting to show it just a little. A couple of months ago Loraine decided that she needed a new computer, and as I was getting hers ready to go I noticed now nice and fast and smooth and easy it was. So i took the plunge and got one for myself.

Think of it as Christmas in June. Ho ho ho.

I don't actually use my laptop for an awful lot, but the two things for which I primarily use it are important. Those two are writing--these things; plus what I do for the History Center and TV-19--and video editing. I could probably keep writing forever with my old machine, but it's really in video editing that I noticed just how old the old one was. Video takes a lot of processing power and a lot of memory, and for what I want to do these days an eight year old laptop just didn't cut it. However, a cursory editing session on the new machine has shown that it's more than up to the task, which means the next time I drive myself over the edge and decide to make a documentary or another season of "Pieces of the Past" I should be more than ready to go.

Not only that, but I was able to transfer everything from the old machine to the new machine, the edit lists in particular. Edit lists are what the video program uses to stick everything together, and the new machine reads everything the old machine did. That's not necessarily important, unless I want to make a change to something I've already done or want to whip out a copy in a different format than that in which I originally rendered it.

And that's a good thing. It means that I won't have to go through and re-edit everything should I find that I need to work on it again.

Once everything's transferred--and despite my sarcasm at the beginning of this piece, it's actually a rather easy thing--I'll be ready to go. And with judicious use of the machine and my personal habit of practicing safe computing whenever I'm online, I'm guessing that the new machine should still be going strong in another eight years.

So the next time I'll probably get to go laptop shopping? 2031. Just think what computers may be like then.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)