I had no idea how dependant I’d become on my Mac until I was without it for more than a week. I can get day-to-day email done using X on my Linux desktop, and I can run Windows under VMware when I have to access an Office file. But I can’t be really productive without things like OmniGraffle and the interface that JUST MAKES SENSE. So, since we don’t really have any spare Macs around the office and Alexis would kill me if I took over her machine for nefarious work purposes, I had to think of something a little more workable.
Last week I got a good-quality Western Digital 200GB hard drive from Fry’s (for like eighty bucks!), then I ordered a USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure from DigiSuperStore.com to put it in. Right now I’m installing Panther across the whole drive and a few of the can’t-live-without applications that I need. I’ll use the disk as a backup target when I (finally) get my Powerbook back so that if something goes wrong again I’ll be able to boot the disk off of any old Mac, restore from the latest backup, and continue working as before…without disturbing whomever is kind enough to loan me their machine (right now I’m borrowing a five year old G3 iMac from one of my co-workers.
Hopefully the plan works well. At least I’ll have a massive disk to organize some of my data, and create offline backups of important items. One hint I noticed though was that since I installed on a very barebones iMac the OS didn’t have drivers for more modern parts in the iBook/PowerBook line like Airport cards. I’m sure there’s something I could have done to upgrade the drivers, but since I had little invested I just decided to re-install the disk connected to my wife’s iBook.
Big external firewire drives are useful, let’s hope this plan works.
Rand Wacker 
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