My heart isn’t in my work at the moment, and it’s for two reasons: 1) Windows XP, and 2) I’m not working from home.

The Dell I’m stuck with is the best in the office and about the equivalent of a Sinclair Spectrum. It’s bearable purely because it fills in time between cups of coffee. I set it to do something really hard, such as open Lotus Notes, Word, and Excel, and I know I have ten minutes before I can do anything productive. That is assuming XP doesn’t find an update and stop everything. Or Notes falls over after starting up, and the whole system has to be rebooted.

We have these ancient computers because earlier this year “head office” wanted to re-equip with new machines. As a recycling nut, our office administrator insisted we take the old computers being stripped out of HQ—then departed on maternity leave with no intention of returning to use the garbage we’ve been saddled with.

Meanwhile my Mac Pro sits at home controlled via the ancient Dell, using a Web browser and the brilliant LogMeIn to set it doing useful things. Every now and again I write a message and have TextEdit “speak” it to my wife. Usually important things such as “Please insert the next DVD for me” so I can get HandBrake to rip it. Or rude questions designed to spice up her solitary office now that I’m not there.

Then, in the space of one afternoon, I burned through £8 of PAYG cell phone calls and the joystick on my two-year-old Sony Ericsson packed up, leaving me with a very hard to use camera/phone.

Oh sod it!

So I bought an iPhone.

But not before prostrating my ignorance to the gurus of iPhoniness, one of whom works for Nokia and the other for Samsung. Both said it was a no brainer: get the iPhone.

Copyright © 2009 Mark Tennent.