Crud.

I was hoping to delay purchasing a new computer for at least another year. After all, I just got a new car in July and the down payment ate a chunk out of my savings.Well, the iMac G5 I got in January of 2005 has been acting up intermittently. When it goes to "sleep," it tends not to wake up and has to be restarted. I'm not sure how long this has been going on, because it started as a once-in-a-while sort of thing I thought was a fluke, then gradually got worse. Then lately, it wouldn't restart unless I switched the power strip off and back on, and sometimes then required multiple tries. I changed my settings so the computer would go to a screen saver rather than going to sleep when I had been away from it for a while, which helped some. Also, the cd drive has been giving me a message that there is a cd inserted that the computer can't read, asking me if I want to eject or ignore. Umm, there wasn't a cd in the drive.I did some research on the Mac support forums and determined I probably needed a new power supply. So I schlepped the thing to the "genius bar" (can we say hyperbole?) at the local Mac store today. Not only is my power supply wonky, but the logic board has problems. The technician, err, "genius" told me that it looked like it had been affected by a power surge or lightning strike. Now, we did have a lightning strike fry a small TV, but that was months ago. I suppose it is possible that my computer was also affected, it just didn't manifest it right away. After all, the thing does run pretty well once I get it started up. Anyway, they could put in a new power supply and logic board for $700-800. I'm not going to spend that on a three year old computer with a woefully out of date processor speed and a lousy graphics card that is not upgradeable because it's integrated.I could get a new iMac. I'm not getting a PC, because I like the Mac OS and I really like not having to worry about icky things like viruses. However, the new iMacs have the same problem as the old ones. You can't upgrade certain components like video cards because they're an all-in-one thing. So in three years, it's an expensive piece of junk. So I think I'm going to cry over my lost savings and invest in a Mac Pro. I can go with the minimum now, which beats the heck out of my current system, and add more memory, a faster video card, additional hard drives, etc., in a few years if I need to. I'd like to make the decision today, because I would like to avoid the scenario where I go to start up my computer and can't get it to work at all. But the cost-- *cry* *whine* *blubber* --as a mostly self-employed person, having a certain amount in my emergency savings is my security blanket. This purchase would put that balance lower than it's been in many years.Well, here's hoping this computer will limp along for another week until my new one comes in so I can transfer the files via firewire. Yes, I've got everything backed up onto an external hard drive!On a brighter note, I edited chapter 2 of my novel and it lost about 100 words even though I added some material, because I found several little trims suggested by the smart folks in my writers' group.