Rather than just buying a new drive, I went out and bought a new powerbook, one that was not dented and would close. Apple has made it very easy to get all the old files onto the new computer (many of which I had on a backup), and iSync took care of calendars, bookmarks, and contacts.

Buying the machine was another story. Aside from the picking which model I wanted to get (the 1.5G/80G/1G/superdrive), I also had a plethora of promotions to choose from. I decided against (how stupid is this?) a free printer because it was an new model of a crappy Epson that I once had, and didn’t like one bit. Guess I could have sold it on eBay, but i wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble. I did get an extension to my .mac account (for $60 instead of $100). Also, because I’m affiliated with a University (I serve on the board of a university foundation), I was able to get an educational discount.

I have always decried how poorly PCs run after a few months/years, but it seems like this PB is 5x faster than my old one. I wish I could figure out why.