Yes, I’ve bought another computer. This will be my fourth in 13 years.
My first was an Acer in 2004 which I paid full price for, it died in 2010 and couldn’t be saved (more on that here). When it died, I had bought my two Sony Vaios secondhand from Grey’s Online and was glad I had.
I am now onto my fourth, again, secondhand, from eBay this time. I cannot afford a Mac. At the going rate of $1500-$2500AUD there is no way I can cough that up with all of the other expenses I have. So, a secondhand one was it. I scoured eBay for weeks, decided to not go back further than five years in age, and set a price limit. Unknown to me, eBay had a 10% off purchase sale going and I managed to get it for $485 with shipping. That’s under budget.
It’s in good condition, no wear and tear except the cords are filthy, but still in order. There is nothing major happening at the moment, except I accidentally used up the battery on day one while trying to transfer my iTunes folder over. I didn’t realise the power cord had come out and it went dead. A few minutes later I got it sorted and went on to other things as to not waste anymore time. I changed all info over in settings, downloaded dropbox over two days, and bought Pages from the app store.
The point of getting a Mac was twofold.
1 – I needed it to upload my books to iBooks. I can’t do it any other way and can only use a distributor like Smashwords.
and 2 – I needed it to download Vellum. A Mac only application that will help me turn my e-books into printed books. The only other way for me to get this was to buy Vellum and then use Macincloud at $30 a pop.
Since print books cost me a fortune to be formatted, I’ll save money almost right away when I start doing all of them. Apparently, it’s so easy, you can get every format of your book in a rough fifteen minutes. If that’s the case, I can get all of my books formatted in one day. What a bloody saving!
While I’m used to my iPad and phone, a Mac is going to take some getting used to. It’s different, the files are vastly different in their layout, and will require some time spent learning.
But overall, I’m glad got it!
Welcome to the family Macbook Pro…