I bought my old MacBook Pro in the summer of 2010. It served me well for lo these many years, taking the beating that I inflict on my laptops with nary a complaint. On its keys I typed All the Money in the World, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, I Know How She Does It, and The Cortlandt Boys, plus hundreds of articles and blog posts. I know six years is long in computer time, and so I have long been emailing myself various things I wanted to keep, just in case. Then, finally, the inevitable happened. This morning I spilled a single drop of hot coffee on the tracking pad, and that was enough to fry it. The mouse is still somewhat usable, but completely erratic. Opening a file can take several minutes. I managed to email a few final things to myself. Then I pulled out my iPhone, ordered a new MacBook Pro, and went to pick it up at the local Apple Store.
The sky was darkening as I went, but the Apple Store folks were quick enough that I made it back to my car by the time the rain started pelting down. Now I am typing this as my first foray on the new machine. I’m trying to picture what books this Mac and I will produce together over the next few years. What will life be like in six years when I manage to fry it? (Or, perhaps, will it last longer? Or be completely obsolete by then?)
All these questions are so weighty that of course I am getting absolutely nothing of consequence done today. Blah. Oh well, here’s to feeling more productive later.
In other news: I could still use some more examples of “networking habits” for an article — do you schedule one lunch a week? Send a thank you note daily? As always you can email me at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com.
Photo: Make new friends, but keep the old — unless the old is no longer functional.
Yay for a new laptop! I had my old Macbook for 5 years – those things last a long time!
I do make a point of scheduling a lunch with a former co-worker once a week but not with overt networking in mind, more to keep in touch with other people I knew in my past working life. (Only people I like and want to hang out with!) But it is focused on people I met at work – that’s about the extent of “networking” that I can stand, 1:1 lunches with people I already know and like 🙂
If you’re emailing yourself things, does that mean you’re not using a cloud-based backup service to automatically back up your computer? If not, it’s worth the peace of mind to check it out.
We use Crashplan and it’s pretty low cost and low maintenance. I’ve never had to *retrieve* stuff from there though.
My Macbook pro is from 2011 and is starting to act up. Good reminder to do a back up soon. (its so weird to me how a single drop of water completely confounds the track pad until it completely dries)
I got my MacBook six summers ago, too. On Tuesday, my power cord gave out, at least that’s what I hoped it was, as I’m on deadline and don’t have time to give a few hours to the Apple Store. Thankfully that’s all it was. I’m hoping I can get another year out of this machine!
Dropbox!!! No need to email files, access anything from anywhere. Sign up now before doom befalls you.
Says someone whose entire livelihood has been saved more than once by Dropbox.
Really. Do it.
Calee is right. I started saving my work to Dropbox rather than hard disk because I work from a home and an office computer. It has worked beautifully, but it also offers so much more. You can restore not only deleted files, but EARLIER VERSIONS of the same file that you have saved numerous times with the same name. That saved my bacon, twice so far. So it’s great not just for backup, but to keep your work on.
Mine lasted 5 years 🙂
2010 – 2015. Must be the shelf life!
I do a hard backup to an external drive every couple of months. I probably should do something cloudbased too but didn’t want to pay for the storage.
You just prompted me to check — mine says mid-2011. I’ve had a message to service the battery for, oh, 2 years now. Eep.
At least I tend to keep my working files in Dropbox, but I should go back the whole thing up now! Thanks for the reminder, and enjoy the new computer. Were you able to migrate everything you needed from your old one?
Laura, do you use Microsoft Word to type your articles and books or another program like Scrivener?
@Katherine- generally Pages (on a Mac). I save as Word docs to send to people. I’ve never used Scrivener… Do you? What do you think?