A Mac addict, that is.

Some might think I’m poking fun at a real disease — addiction — with this column. I assure you, I’m not.

I haven’t written Macrimination in awhile. Mainly, it’s been because of personal and family responsibilities. But I also realized that I was spending way too much time in front of that lovely Mac of mine. I wasn’t always doing anything, either. Sometimes, I found myself opening windows and closing them, changing the view (list, icon, etc.) and aimlessly wandering my hard drive.

Now, don’t get me wrong, when it comes to addictions, there are worse ones to have, I believe. But I also thought it was time to disconnect a bit, so I did.

But I knew I couldn’t stay away forever. When I came back, I did have a new perspective that enabled me to realize some things. For instance, I had been wondering where all of my money went and why I was having such a tough time financially.

Answer: It was sitting on my desk, of course. I had plowed insane amounts of money (at least, by my standards) into my G4, its monitor and programs and peripherals. So I started cleaning house. I’ve wanted to be mobile, so I sold the tower and the studio display on eBay and bought a used TiBook. I came out ahead in the transaction and got some of that cash back that I had dumped into the Money Pit. I’ve also found a bit of that excitement that I had when I got my first Mac — from an unexpected source.

While my old computer is in the mail to its new home, and my new one is on its way to me, I’ve found myself without a computer.

Well, almost

A friend gave me a PowerBook 520 awhile back because she knew she wouldn’t get that much selling it. "It’ll have a better home with you," she said. I had taken to using it as a journal before bed sometimes, but other than that, it ran OS 7.1 and had a 33 Mhz processor, so I didn’t think very much of using it as a computer.

But since I knew I was going to be waiting for the TiBook for awhile, I downloaded OS 7.5 and, using my USB floppy drive, made 25 floppies of the OS and Open Transport. With an ethernet adapter that I picked up ages ago, I’ve connected the "Blackbird" PowerBook to my cable modem, and it works fine (even if I had to turn off Java in Netscape 3 and the pictures on Web pages look cartoonish on the grayscale screen). I’m writing this column in Word 5.1. I still find myself going for the dock sometimes, but other than that, it’s been a very enjoyable experience.

It just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Just like the Beatles went back to their "roots" to make "Let it Be," we all must go back to our beginnings now and then and remember what it was that got us excited about all of this stuff in the first place.

Now that I’m back in the saddle, next week we’ll talk about a subject that’s on everyone’s minds right now: the iTunes Music Store for Windows.