Apple? More like Rabbits!

Okay, it's been a while since my last update, and the landscape around here has changed appreciably. My wonderful wife was able to find a buyer for the Dell XPS laptop, and we were due a refund on our taxes. These two numbers coincidentally added up to a number that just about covered the cost of an iMac. So what was I to do? My Windows PC was still acting up even after rebuilding it using Vista, which is another saga in and of itself. Suffice it to say that it pushed me over the edge. So I decided to pull the trigger on a 24" iMac.

Since I had decided on the 3.06GHz model, the only decision was which graphics card. I'm typically an nVidia faithful, but the info on the Apple website showed the ATI Radeon HD 4850 as being appreciably faster. Unfortunately, the ATI option changed the ship time from 1-3 days to 3-6 weeks. Yes, weeks. After considerable Googling, I found that the reason for the delay was either that ATI could not meet its production commitments, or the drivers wouldn't be available until the Leopard 10.5.7 update was released later this year. So since nVidia was able to get its products delivered, I decided to go with the nVidia GT130. Besides, it scratched the Immediate Gratification itch as well without sacrificing much.

Shortly after placing the order, my wife was talking about how she thought it would be nice if we could have two workstations in the office so that we could both work on a computer. I pointed out that the likelihood of us overlapping like that was probably fairly low, and as such, it was hard to justify purchasing another iMac. If anything, I thought that maybe it would make more sense to have another MacBook in basic trim since most of the secondary work would probably consist of checking emails, surfing the web, or word processing/spreadsheets. At any rate, we decided to table the discussion since there wasn't really a pressing need.

The next day, my wife announced that she had thought about it, and she agreed that the path forward should be another MacBook instead of another iMac. In another coincidence, I received an email from MicroCenter announcing their Mac Month specials, which included a $200 rebate on the basic trim white MacBook. I stared long and hard at that advertisement just to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me. I even had my friend at Apple look at it, and she confirmed that it was the 2009 model white MacBook with the nVidia chipset. Much to my surprise, my wife quickly authorized procurement.

And just like that, our household is now an Apple household. The best part of it all is that thanks to the medical flexible spending account, selling the Dell XPS laptop, and the income tax refund, we only had to spend out-of-pocket on the latest MacBook.

So yeah, like the title says: Apple? More like Rabbits!