It didn’t go according to plan. Not even close. I placed the reserve on the 14′ iBook with the 54MB wireless card thrown in; I didn’t get it. I feels odd that it was never mine, but pretty good as well.

It was just over an hours drive to get to the nearest store that has a decent selection of Macintosh’s. When we got there we discovered it was heaving, people were stacked on top of other people; and not in the good way. Mothers Day weekend is not the time to go shopping. So we had to fight our way into the store, almost literally, and - not for the first time - I wished I had a scythe to clear the way..

When we eventually did get in and find the computer section the volume of Macs was impressive, eMac, iMac, iBook and even the iPod; and of course the PowerBook (I always miss the w out of that; confusing.) The section had three staff that were permanently engaged, half of England had decided to buy computers all at the same time and all from the same store.

When I eventually got the attention of one of the assistants ‘ by falling to the floor foaming at the mouth and pretending to have a fit ‘ I explained I was here to look at the reserved iBook, and unplanned my mouth added ‘while you are there give me that 12′ PowerBook to try too’. I looked at the two, the iBook looks like a Mac, sleek white expanses of plastic that seemed to go on forever; it reminded me of a sheep.

The PowerBook was sleek and grey, hunched in the iBooks shadow, it looked like a wolf about to devour the white and black laptops surrounding it. Aw, I thought, it wants to maim and destroy all before it, cute. The size difference between the iBook and the PowerBook was huge, you could lose the PowerBook in your pocket. Probably under a few coins and some fluff. You could have clubbed a sheep to death with the iBook.

I prodded them both, thanked the assistant and wandered around the store. Driving Mrs JD nuts as now I couldn’t decide between the iBook and the PowerBook. It was the inattention driving her nuts; a man and woman thing. ‘Do you like this?’ she said holding up some red throw, only to turn to a zombie geek who was defiantly not on the same planet as her muttering ‘White or grey, white or grey,’ over and over.

In the end, after getting punched a few times from Mrs JD, I decided that the mini 12′ PowerBook is for me. I could give the cute baby free reign on its desire to destroy all other laptops the world over.

We returned to the overworked assistants only to find them even busier, someone was buying a gigantic HP laptop ‘you could have used it as a futon ‘ and someone with taste was buying a PowerBook, a 15′ SuperDrive. I tried the foaming and rolling around bit again but they were not having any of it this time and just stepped over me.

Spin forward thirty minutes and an assistant pulled from another department later and my credit card was undergoing the torture of having huge volumes of cash ripped out of it. It was one hundred of her majesty’s best more expensive than the iBook, but we were on a roll, so much so I paid for the airport card too, almost another hundred; the entrails of my credit card were a sight to behold.

I have to admit when we got home I geeked out. Almost to the point where a Dungeons and Dragons regular could have stood and taken the piss; and been in the right. I took pictures, of the box, of unwrapping the box, of the unwrapped box and so on. You get the idea. Sorry. Mrs JD enjoyed laughing at me so at least she got some entertainment from it. I will spare you shots of me grinning like Ringo on LSD, it’s for the best.

So I’m really tying to get used to this PowerBook now, it’s very different and the switch from XP to Macintosh isn’t always straightforward. You expect some features to remain the same and others to change; it’s sometimes surprising which are which. Oh and yes, this was written on the Powerbook. I’ll expand on the switch a little later, but for the moment here’s the geek pictures of the wolfish PowerBook. No doubt prior to some destructive spree, the cute wee thing.

Billy, the brightest of our cats, decides to check out the box while he can. He can’t kill or eat it so he moves on.

This is most of the boxes contents. The black Panther guide in contrast to the rest of the documentation. On the left is the extreme card, on the right the powerpook sat at the initial question screen on first boot.

With a mouse, ADSL modem and ethernet attacjed this is the PowerBook. Right after this we lost the house power for three hours and it was pitch black, yay decent battery life.

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