Get as old and curmudgeonly as some computer users, self included here, and there isn’t much that puts an enormous grin on your face. Perhaps the mid-term elections did for a lot of people in the US but for the rest of the world it was just something that happened “over there”. Apart from implications for our respective governments’ foreign policy, is unlikely to affect us individually. But one Saturday recently a smile inducing event happened that is hopefully going to be life-changing.

It started as a simple “look and see” at Mini’s - those cars that BMW make in the UK, in emulation of a tiny car that first hit the road in 1959. Both the old and new Mini’s became film stars as getaway vehicles for blonds Michael Cain and the far more attractive Charlize Theron. Modern Minis are a lot larger than their forebears and with the rear seats down have space for carrying stolen gold or the normal things household vehicles have to transport: a week’s grocery shopping, bags of manure, flat pack furniture from Ikea… A large Volvo estate car would be better suited perhaps but they also seem to be owned by family men whose wives have forced them to have a vasectomy.

Apart from the excess of questionable design features inside, the Mini proved attractive enough for us to be persuaded to take a couple for a test drive. The first, a standard Mini Cooper was exactly like driving a modern small car should be, very nippy around corners but not exactly rapid with three of us inside.

Then we drove the Mini Cooper S. Wow! Its little supercharged engine keeps on pulling even in 6th gear. After zipping around winding country lanes, we joined a major road. Ahead was a low, sleek, and expensively sporty car whose driver floored the gas as the road opened up. Naturally we did the same and kept up easily, much to the driver of the car in front’s embarrassment, even though we were only using four of the six close ratios in the gearbox. But then the car saleswoman noticed our speed and hinted we should get back into speeds with 2 digits. Well, not so much of a hint, more of a shriek.

The buzz we got from the drive was immense, you don’t drive a Mini, more wear one and this was an article of clothing we decided we must have at the earliest opportunity. Black naturally, to match the Mac laptop and iPod we’ve also got to have before we die, or next year, whichever comes earliest. In fact, just make it a Mini Cooper S in any colour and we’ll willingly stick with our old iPods and Powerbook.

That’s a problem also noted by Gene Steinberg who wonders if Mac fans are a dying breed. Like many Mac users of a “certain age”, he adopted Macs because at the time the only competition was DOS-based IBM PC clones. Gene, like us, has stuck with Macs over the years because for the most part they enable him to concentrate on working rather than getting his computer working. With all the recent palaver about Apple’s hardware failures, cases discolouring, unexplained shutdowns and the like, is Apple such a strong magnet now that Windows isn’t so bad after all. Will existing Mac users try Windows, possibly for the first time, and decide to move to the dark side? Are Apple’s woes likely to put off potential switchers in the same way their recent ad. campaign has?

On the same lines, another announcement was made, by Fastmac the upgrade specialists. Their advanced orders for Pismo Powerbook batteries were so large they put the batteries into volume production and bundle a processor upgrade as well. The Pismo is a product from the last century, designed to run Mac OS 8 on PPC G3 chips. By now all Pismos should be long dead or so obsolete they are virtually useless. We have an old Pismo used as a TV and occasional roving Mac. It runs MacOS 10.4.8 with no problems and replaced a Powerbook 3400 still chugging along until it became too painfully slow for all but basic text entry. Modern websites and file sizes are well beyond its capability but in its day it served admirably as a Postscript RIP, ISDN station and general purpose machine.

According to Fastmac’s blurb their new battery’s …”patented technology allows tiny ceramic particles (each less than a millionth of a millimeter in size) to be integrated into the molecular structure of the chemical binding agent found inside each Lithium Ion battery.” Those tiny particles sound a lot like the metallic ones that caused Dell’s and Apple’s laptop batteries to short out and catch fire, recently.

If you just happen to have an old Pismo battery laying around, this site takes you through the dismantling process. Note that it warns that Li-Ion batteries can explode. This is somewhat of an understatement, lithium is a highly volatile metal that burns uncontrollably and reacts violently in water or if crushed, dropped on the floor or shorted out by rogue particles.

That’s something most males don’t think about as they slip their cell phones into their trouser pockets, next to their “family jewels”. Or maybe it’s the “Volvo effect” they are after?

With fellow blogger Dave Adamson launching an attack on Apple Macintosh computer users, should it be time to parry his remarks? As the (seemingly) only Mac user here perhaps it should fall to me but to be honest I couldn’t care less.

Our decision to use Apple products was made over 2 decades ago when the only viable opposition was clunky IBM PC clones running DOS or “home computers” such as Amigas. Every three years the competition is reviewed as “new computer time” comes around and apart from a brief flirtation with Sun’s expensive workstations, Apple’s products come off best for our needs every time. It wouldn’t even be too hard to switch away from Macs as all our ancillary equipment is cross-platform and software publishers usually have some kind of deal to change platforms.

The latest Apple Computers are able to run both Windows and MacOS, as well as Linux and other more rarified operating systems all at the same time so it would appear that Apple is even a better bet. Then IT Pro’s sibling magazine ran a review of an Apple computer and announced it was the fastest PC in the UK.

What do I care as long as my computer is fast enough for my needs? I’ve never needed Windows or Linux anyway.

Apple’s computers have also tumbled in price and now similarly configured machines see Macintoshes far cheaper than Dell’s. Macs have always been well-specced with such things as gigabit ethernet and Firewire as standard for years. The days of limited availability have gone too, with Dixons and high street stores stocking Apple equipment. Personally, the cost of our computers has always been secondary to what it will do for us. My new Macintosh always cost at least two grand and the RAM and hard disks from the one replaced are always the wrong sort as technology moves forward. In any case, invariably the old Mac is sold on for half its original purchase price so the real cost of ownership is actually pretty low. Unlike the high-spec. Windows PC my son built, it cost him over £800 but a year later he struggled to get £150 for it.

The one thing that I think does have some bragging rights is the appearance of computers. Don’t PC manufacturers have any taste? Whatever criticisms Dave may fire at Apple, I’d much rather have a Mac in my living room or office than the incredibly ugly piles of silicone chippery and plastic bling I’ve seen, still stuck in the pre-Cuban Missile Crisis school of design. Give me Jonathon Ive’s Bauhaus-influenced understated creations any day.

It’s typical that Mac users would migrate back to BT when the trend is in the reverse direction. After all, we already proved our trend-bucking tendencies by taking the left hand path in the first place. As far as we are concerned, windows are things to look through, not curse and swear at or catch dread diseases from. In fact, back in the early 1990’s we even willingly installed software that made our Macs sniff and sneeze as if infected.

As long-term ‘Net users who embraced broadband when it was in reality a less narrow band, this is not the first time we’ve changed suppliers. Moving ISP’s is easy as long as important sites are hosted elsewhere. Then there can be nothing held to ransom. This time we are changing our telecoms supplier too – on one of our lines because the other has always been BT, who are in any case responsible for the wires delivering telecoms to our office. The advantage of keeping two real (ie. not VOIP) telephone numbers being that no MAC number is needed to make the change. The new broadband service is installed on one line while at the same time the other is still running the old supplier’s broadband. Once everything is completed, the old supply can be terminated…errr…hopefully.

Experience in the past has shown that stopping broadband service is not as easy as it sounds. As long as the minimum contract time has elapsed it should be a case of informing the supplier that you no longer want their service. Except nowadays, just getting through to the supplier can be a case of spending hours of time on the telephone line and seething when another bill arrives. One time we were even ripped-off by a company claiming to supply a Business Service which was anything but. We paid to get out of that contract. Hopefully Bulldog, our latest old supplier, has got the message and will refund the money “stolen” from my card.

When ringing around potential suppliers, it was extremely refreshing to find there are still companies who don’t operate monolithic call centres but have a local office with real people who answer the phone immediately and even offer to visit to sort things out. Score a million for BT. Then there are ISP’s who also supply something that is now euphemistically termed customer service except in their case it really is. Plus they are cheaper than BT even though they supply a BT wholesale service. Score a zillion for Aquiss, our new ISP.

Finally, how is it possible that the same telephone exchange can send the same information down the same wires and run many times faster than before? Our shift to Bulldog had been when they offered “up to” 8MB service and had put their own boxes at the exchange. The best we got was 2.1MBps down and 400Kbps up. Shifting to BT increased that to 5.5MB and 700kbps. Bulldog always told we were too far from the exchange and it was noise on the line, the same line BT manage to squeeze a lot more speed out of with no difficulty. The only down side is that Bulldog’s phone service gives lots of freebees, such as call divert, which BT want to charge extra for. I suppose someone has to pay for all the local offices, it’s just that they make you feel that you are personally responsible for their profits.

J. G. Ballard was nearly right when he said: “Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It’s going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.” Except he should have said: Reality is no longer the stuff of commercial broadband suppliers who get nasty and inside your head.”

T. S. Elliot put it even better: “If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms… you must accept the terms IT offers you.”