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?