Selfish New Computer Post

I bought a new computer. Despite it being a Macbook Pro, and having, at first glance, lots of grunt and all of that stuff, my existing laptop was a depressing companion. I've owned it since 2011/12, and flogged it to death, creating a career and sanity-saving video-editing sideline at work. I've also used my venerable metal friend to create over 200 songs in Garageband, as well as a bunch of heavy-duty uploading, downloading and general digital tomfoolery. As a result, it's completely funked: it's slower than molasses in zero-gravity, loading things is an almost Biblical struggle sometimes - like, tabs in browsers, not InDesign, for crying out loud. It even has a few dents where my trademark sanguine, laissez-faire attitude has - gasp now if you like - slipped a little, and I've wanted it to die. Hard to believe, I know.

So, I did some research, some soul-searching, went on a retreat or two, meditated, listened to my inner spirit animal and realised that really, all I actually do is write things in various places, watch various bits of digital media, and listen to songs on computers these days. I also like the idea of a computer being what I believe the originators of the Internet foresaw when the web was created - millions of nodes, feeding an unimaginably diverse galaxy of connections with information, which has long since made the leap from the printed word to the virtual one. The internet is now cloud-based, and in my case, light, fast and agile. So, I bought a Chromebook.

I am tapping this out on it now. I got a Pixelbook Go, the basic m3 model of Google's latest fast'n'light machine. I love it so far. The keyboard is sensational. The speakers are hands-down the best I've ever heard on a laptop of this size. It's faster than a greased ferret down a Welshman's trouser-leg - mainly because it doesn't have a great deal to actually occupy its time, other than throwing the characters I ask it to up on its 1080p screen. I like it a lot, so far. Initially, I'm a bit fearful that it might be too limited - too one-dimensional, and too much like a big, fast phone with bells on. But hey - I've done it now.

I went back and forth over the various ramifications of buying either (a) a cheaper Chromebook, (b) a Microsoft Surface thingy, (c) a new Macbook Pro, or (d) nothing at all. In the end, I decided that a new, fast, responsive computer would encourage me to write more, and I'm allegedly a writer, so a brand new, flexible platform on which to document things would get me back down the word-mine. And it has. There will be drawbacks, unforeseen fuckery and missteps aplenty, but in the main, I love it already.