Published by HerCampus – January 21, 2011
The hour I spend at the gym, with my phone left in my apartment, is generally the best hour of a very long day. My dependence on the small piece of electronic has become more than an addiction.
I’m the first one to admit that I feel empty when I forget it on the charger in a rush, but let me assure you – that occurrence is extremely rare in my life.
My dependence grew stronger the second week back from winter break when I had to leave my beloved three-year-old MacBook Pro with Apple at the Genius Bar for a new logic board – something I’ve been avoiding doing. But now I was on co-op and no longer needed my laptop for real things and my parents won’t replace it just yet.
I didn’t know it was going to be the longest week of my life.
Back on a mid-November night, I was chugging away on a graphics and design project due the next morning. Headphones in, iTunes running in the background behind Adobe InDesign. Safari powering my multitasking with Facebook and Twitter both clicks away. My iPhone within reach.
As my computer got hot from charging, I moved it from my lap to the living room table and reseated on the floor. Then, that spinning-rainbow-ball-of-doom, that every Mac user has their own name for because it doesn’t always disappear with a fairytale ending, appeared.
“Deep breath. It’ll disappear. It’s because I have InDesign open,” I thought.
I was wrong.
While sitting there waiting, minutes ticked by. The clock stopped changing. I couldn’t move the spinning-rainbow-ball-of-dome around the screen. I couldn’t force-quit InDesign. Then the screen flickered. And, again. Then, white horizontal lines appeared across and proceeded to flicker in a rhythm that should come with a seizure warning. I started wondering when the screen would go black and I’d be project-less.
I turned it on and off. It seemed fine, but I called it a night. Finished my project the next morning with no hiccups. A few weeks later, while cranking out the final project for the same class, it did it again. Over winter break and with my dad in eyesight, it did it again while doing the general Facebook, Twitter and email in front of the TV.
I lobbied for a new computer, the parents wanted the Genius Bar to check it out. I made an appointment for the first weekend back at school and took it in. I hoped they’d say it’d be really expensive to repair it.
I was right; it should have been roughly $903 to fix. I was experiencing a known problem in the late 2007 MacBook Pro model that was due to a faulty logic board. Apple had extended the repair window for this issue and it’d cost me absolutely nothing to get it fixed.
It didn’t really cost me nothing. I had to give up my laptop for three to five days while they fixed it. At the time, I didn’t know that they’d wind up stretching it to six days before my main source of entertain would return to my lap.
I thought my dependence on my cellphone was bad, but this turned out to be worse.
That Saturday was the same Saturday of the shooting in Arizona. I had no idea anything had happened until I returned home after a day of shopping, turned on that week’s TiVoed Grey’s Anatomy and loaded Twitter on my iPhone. ‘Pulling down to refresh’ became my news source.
I wanted to be following it on CNN.com, Twitter and Tumblr simultaneously. That wasn’t an option today, or for the rest of the week. I resorted to ‘old’ ways and switched from bonding with my TiVo to physically watching the news, wanting more information than the anchors and commercial breaks were feeding me.
As the week went on, I had trouble keeping up with everything going on in Arizona that wasn’t limited to 140 characters. I was only reading email on my phone and barely replying, as I fear over looked autocorrect fails.
My obsession with Tumblr was put on a back burner except when desperate. Facebook was rarely checked. Then, I discovered that Oregon Trail was on-sale in the App Store but had to be purchased over wifi or through iTunes as the 3G network couldn’t handle the size of the download. I needed my laptop back.
Monday rolled through as rumors of a blizzard dumping more than a foot of snow on Boston surfaced. I wanted a weather.com report, but the app wasn’t doing me justice. I need interactive maps and predicted snowfall amounts. The blizzard hit and I trekked out to work as campus enjoyed a snow day. It was now Wednesday and I was still computerless. I left for work hoping it’d make it home
Thursday came and went. No call. As I was finished my lunch break Friday, my phone rang. My laptop was ready. I could pick up on my way home from work.
Since I’m sitting here writing you all my sab story of the week I spent without my laptop, I obviously survived the blizzard, however I’m not sure I’d survive another week without my laptop.
I have an iPhone. It’s great for on the go news and entertainment, but in the life of a college student where we stay up past our betimes writing articles and doing homework and Facebook chatting and retweeting, the 15-inch screen creams the 2.5 pocket size.