[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Tokolosh

It would be a different story if you had a mac. > Virtual Pc.
If you're looking for a machine purely for writing, the old coloured iMacs are sufficient.

I bought my Quicksilver G4 five years ago, and have never had to reinstall the operating system, or any of my hardware/software.

Tip 1: OS X has a built in function to run so called cron scripts that fix your file system and hard disk in general. It's scheduled to run automatically during the night if the computer is idle. Some essential operations run every night, others only once every week or every month. So if you want your Mac to be healthy the most important thing you can do is to leave it running overnight, especially if you have worked on it all day and moved around big files. Also, it automatically does defragmenting for you.

Tip 2: You can also put your mac to sleep from a different location by sending yourself an e-mail.

oh cron jobs are common to linux machines, windows also has a scheduler and you can ask it to do this & that & the other. i update my virus definitions every morning for example (thats actually separate from windows), and i run maintenance programs regularly, but i turn off the machine at night because i have it in a battery backup unit & those suck a lot of power and $$.

about the typewriter thing:

i actually DO have an old colo(u)red imac, a G3 from 199...7?-- that i traded-- but it's a trash heap, and i fear that the hard disk might drive might die & fuck me up. sure i could make backups (i have several firewire/usb hard drives floating around), but the thing runs OS9 and finding software for it is a pain in the ass. i attempted to buy her memory about a year ago but it was a) ridiculously overpriced b) i forget what-- so i didn't.

don't know what im going to do about this. but sure it's fun to think outloud on the internet.