Mac Book...I wish!

Our laptop is on its last leg. We bought it the summer before G bear was born. At almost three, G bear is doing great, not so for the three year old computer. Each day she gets faster the laptop gets slower. More knowledge increases her abilities...not so for our little Dell. Dr. J and I have started hinting around to each other that maybe it is time to move on to a new computer. At Sam's while we peruse the shelves we talk about how laptops today have more memory than our desk top. We talk about speed. We talk about nifty options. We mention the fact that decent memory is actually very affordable. At our home computer advertisements are being looked at and left out for the other spouse to see. Each day involves a yelling session at our dell about how slow it is. Secretly I hid my birthday money and a cash back visa card and figured that after Dr. J's b-day we'd add his loot to mine and go out and get something new, fast, and sleek...something that can handle life more like our daughter. What I had not anticipated would be the Apple Dilemma. You see I come from an Apple family. I can still remember our first Apple computer. My mom bought it used from some business park when I was in first grade. It had a tiny screen, maybe ten inches diagonal and the only colors were green and brighter green. There was a writing program and some sort of drawing program. I swear it was called kidpics but that is probably just my imagination. It had a printer that used reels of paper. It had this awesome little rainbow apple logo. I thought it was the greatest ever because I could typed out my cub reporter articles rather then turning them in hand written. I could use spell check, although I rarely did. That computer was probably the only cool thing my family ever accomplished. My mother recognized computers were going to be household objects long before the rest of the public did. Since that time my family has had many different computers and during my mom's second marriage we even had a long stint of PC use, but since her divorce she has reverted to her Apple loving days. I think it has something to do with her being a teacher. These are the people in my immediate family who own a Mac Book. My mother, my sister JoJo, my sister Flo, my brother David, and my brother Danny who actually owns two. Meanwhile my sister Ang and I, the two married ones, are using Dell computers. For the most part I haven't minded. In fact for years I got irritated at Apple for their obvious branding (stupid white) but in the interest of good research I decided to check them out again. One of the most disappointing feature with our laptop has been it's battery life. Enter the Mac Book....I feel like angles should be singing. Their computer has a seven hour battery life. Add to that the fact that it is suppose to last five years...well seriously lets shout a hallelujah! Have you ever paid to replace your battery? It is not pretty. Another irritation has been our susceptibility to viruses. Even using our firewalls we've been hit a couple times. Apple, because of it's smaller market value has been largely left alone. Apple also has cool features like built in web cam (although most new PC have this feature as well) and great programs like garage band and movie making software. And then there was the whole Windows fiasco. Did I really want to join the Vista crew? Was it worth it to switch everything over to Windows 7? The thoughts are just exhausting. I actually decided I was going to opt in to the fruit business my family so fully enjoys. Then reality struck. For your money Apple is just so much more expensive. How did my family afford to go this path. Have they picked computers over food? My mother says if you love something you are willing to make sacrifices, but seriously folks, the thing is like three times as expensive when you add everything you need. How depressing. So here is the Apple Dilemma. Now I'm itching to take a bite but realize I'm going to need a whole lot more birthdays to be able to afford it :(