Aphrodite: July 1994 to February 1998 – Power Macintosh 6100/60 – Hard drives named Mercury and Venus

Ares: February 1998 to February 2001- PowerMac G3/233 – Hard drive named Mars

Zeus: February 2001 to February 2006 – PowerBook G4/500 – Hard drive named Jupiter

Cronus: February 2006 to March 2010 – iMac 20-inch 2GHz Intel Core Duo – Hard drive named Saturn

and now…

Ouranos: March 2010 to ??? – 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 27-inch iMac – Hard drive named Uranus

I fully maxed out the configurable options of course.

I’ve been hankering to replace Cronus for awhile. I normally would have done so last year, but we deferred it since, you know, baby. Ever since the end of January I’ve had an itchy trigger finger and have been ready to do it, but I was waiting for the all clear on the yellow screen issue on the 27″ iMacs. A week ago came what will probably be as close as I’ll get to that all clear. I delayed another week or so for no good reason, but a few hours ago I ordered what will be Ouranos. It’ll probably be here in about a week.

Cronus really hasn’t been able to keep up with everything I want to do with it in almost a year. I have felt cramped and constrained and have not done a lot of things I wanted to just because I dreaded the pain of dealing with Cronus straining to do what I wanted and sitting there twiddling my thumbs as the machine thrashed constantly with even my normal set of open applications fully consuming the available physical memory (almost all the time) and the CPU (probably three quarters of the time). This will be like finally being able to breathe again. Memory, CPU and Disk Space to spare… I hope. :-)

I had the usual dilemma in terms of what to buy. Well, it was of course going to be a Mac, that wasn’t a question. And I know in general desktops are going the way of the dodo and all, but I have access to a laptop already via work for those times where a laptop is just easier, and it is really nice to have the big screen and large hard drive and a bit more cpu and memory etc that a desktop brings. If I didn’t have access to a laptop (or in the future, perhaps, cough, an iPad) that was usable for light email and web surfing and the like, that equation would probably change entirely and I’d probably want a laptop as my primary home machine. But as it is, for my personal machine a desktop makes sense.

I perhaps could have gone the MacPro route. Unlike the iMac, it would not have been in the budget to go for a fully “maxed out” MacPro configuration. (Try it on the Apple Store… maxing out a Mac Pro… including dual 30″ Apple Cinema Displays… comes out at over $17,000 and is totally certifiably insane for home use.) So I would have needed to figure out exactly what set of options I wanted for an initial configuration, knowing I could upgrade things in the future of course… dunno. It might have been an option, but those machines just never really appealed to me as much. I like the idea of getting a high end iMac, maxing it on the various memory and hard drive options, then feeling pretty confident I’ll be OK with this machine… without dealing with upgrades of various components and the like… until I’m ready to replace it again in three or four years. So… iMac it was. (And the new iMacs, unlike older iMacs, can still be used as monitors for another computer once the computer itself is not in use… which is a nice plus that extends the useful life of the purchase.)

Anyway, the Apple Store Order Status thingy says to expect it between March 9th and March 15th. The new desk it will go on is already in place. I am more than ready.