So, a bit has happened since the last update from the Dan-front. For example, I’ve been accepted to RIC and UMass Dartmouth so far (waiting on all the others still).

And with this foray into the world of post-secondary education comes the ever-elusive need for a laptop: sure, I might be able to get by if I just brought fez with me to uni, but I need a laptop, and that’s that!

Well, here’s some background. I started out as an Amiga user. I dabbled with Macs in elementary school, but was forced into the PC world like most people. I tried to rebel by running Linux and FreeBSD, but I could never be as hip as those PowerBook-toting gods.

Until now.

Basically, I knew before the hunt even really started that I wanted a Mac. Yeah, I used to bitch and moan when the Intel transition started, but I guess I’ve accepted defeat. And things aren’t all bad, I guess. I’ve used my friend’s MacBook quite a bit for recording with Madonna and Child, and it just reinforced my beliefs that OSX is probably the overall best desktop OS the world has right now. Sure, it may not be the absolute finest technically, but it’s pretty, and you can run shitloads of proprietary apps that we all need (Photoshop, anyone?) and open-source Unix apps side by side. How cool is that?

Honestly, this is what I need. Trying to do anything music-related on Unix is almost an absolute disaster (FreeBSD is right out for this, linux makes things a little better but it’s no walk in the park). I think the guys at Apple have figured out the multimedia thing pretty decently, though, and using windows is right out for me anyway.

All I’ll need is a MIDI interface and a firewire audio interface and I’m golden. And that’s just the music side of things. As some of you know, I only run windows these days to use Photoshop, because I can’t stand the Gimp. Now I can stay in one OS and do everything I need to do.

So anyway, my friend Joel has a previous-generation Core2 Macbook Pro 15″. And he says he loves it. I am looking at this model because I have this giant phobia of buying a machine that has no way to access its internal bus (i.e. the lack of an ExpressCard/34 slot on the MacBook). Plus, the backlit keyboard is just plain snazzy. And since the padre has offered to buy a laptop as a combo birthday/graduation gift (contingent on me giving him fez, something I have no qualms with), it works out nicely (no more selling off synths!).

So there you have it.

Dan out.