Maybe the easiest switch ever
- Girl from my Linguistics class
- Wow, that laptop is so cute! It’s tiny.
- Chris
- Yup.
- Girl
- I’ve been looking to get a laptop for a while, but they’re all, like, three grand.
- Chris
- Yeah. Try the campus computer store, you get a pretty decent student discount for stuff there.
- Girl
- Really? How much is one like that?
- Chris
- Ummm… about seventeen–hundred, I think.
- Girl
- Shit, you’re kidding me. Oh, it’s an Apple. I don’t really ‘do’ Apples.
- Chris
- Yeah, I used to use Windows but I switched over about a year ago. It takes about a month to get used to all the little differences, though.
- Girl
- It’s so cute though! It looks really light, is it light? Can I lift it up? [lifts it up] That’s so cool, it’d fit in my bag. It doesn’t have a CD burner in it though, does it?
- Chris
- Yeah, it does.
- Girl
- Oh, cool. How about a DVD player?
- Chris
- Yep.
- Girl
- Can you open up Word files?
- Chris
- Yeah; you can get Office for it, so you can do whatever — PowerPoint, Word, Excel, whatever.
- Girl
- That’s awesome. I’m gonna go have a look in the computer store this afternoon.
- Chris
- Do you have a digital camera?
- Girl
- Yeah
- Chris
- They have this program on them called iPhoto; once you use that you’ll never be able to turn back
- Girl
- Heh. We’ll see.
During the lecture I had a quick peek at the AU Apple Education Store to make sure I’d told her the right price. As it turns out, you’d pay US$1700 for a 12" PowerBook, not AU$1700… so I was a little off.
- Chris
- Hey, it turns out that the ones like mine, the PowerBooks, are actually twenty–four hundred… but they’ve been upgraded since I got mine, so they have a bunch of new features and whatnot. You can get a white one though, an iBook, for fifteen hundred though.
- Girl
- Oh. Well I’ll go have a look anyway.
Five days later, at our next lecture…
- Girl
- I’m getting an Apple! A cute little white one. Y’know yours is, like, special? With the metal casing?
- Chris
- Uh, yeah.
- Girl
- I’m so excited.
Further proof that price is still the deciding factor in any computer purchase. Still don’t know her name, though.