Laptop hand-me-down

Being a CEO has its perks, but getting the latest toys should not be one of them.

It strikes me as ridiculous to see the CEO of the company with gadgets that they own just for the "oneupmanship" of it. Of course, the same can be said about the sports cars, the huge mansion, the trophy wife...

I do most of my roadwarrior work using an old and battered Titanium G4. It was the ex-CEOs laptop, and has obviously seen one too many airport check-ins. The casing was damaged from being dropped on the ground, the CDROM was broken, and the battery was dead. I had a choice to make: purchase a new laptop, or fix this one. I didn't need a CDROM drive right away, and a battery cost $120CDN. If I can't show restraint at purchasing for myself, how can I show proper spending diligence to my investors ? I purchased the battery, fixed the casing with some vise-grips, and bought a CDROM drive when my travels brought me near the We Love Macs store.

That was last year. A month ago, I found myself being quite annoyed at the sound level of the 4800rpm drive in the Titanium. Also, the memory was getting a bit tight as I am now using a few more apps in the background than before. I priced and ordered a new 7200rpm drive (yes, I picked one that had less heat-load and used the same amount of battery life as my old one) and another stick of RAM. So, $300CDN later, I am once again happy. I had to use Carbon Copy Cloner to move the data to the other drive, but it was quite painless.

This laptop is over 4 years old, and I've had it for about 1.5 years now. I figure it should last me another 2 years, if the LCD holds on.