Fiber Fool

Follow the feats and foibles of a fiber fanatic.

I am Home

Filed under: Moi — Kristi at 8:51 pm on Thursday, December 28, 2006

We made it to MN. Pulled in around 10:30 am on Saturday morning in fact. We got home last night (Wednesday) about 10:30 pm. Now it is snowing again and the NWS is calling for another 5-9 inches overnight and an additional 2-4 inches tomorrow during the day. We definitely made it home just in time. Unfortunately, it seems this may be putting a wrinkle in the plans to have the holidays with DH’s family as his parents have to be in Arizona by the 6th so they can depart with their fellow RV park residents on a cruise. But, we’ll just sit tight on the presents and see what unfolds.

Grandma and Grandpa surprised my mom, my sister, and me with a bonus for the year with instructions to do something special with it. I’m thinking a new laptop, but I’m torn between Windows or Mac.

My Adobe programs are woefully out of date and are old enough to not allow for upgrade pricing so it seems that if I am to switch platforms the time would be now. However, that just about doubles the price of the laptop (ignoring the dual boot option you can do on the Macs to run Windows-based programs) whereas I could put that off a while longer if I went with a Windows machine.

Before Christmas I think I would have had no trouble choosing as there was a Sony Viao with what I wanted in the way of hard drive and memory for less than going Mac, but now they are about the same price. I was a little worried about going with a smaller screen, but looking at others with the same size screen as the Mac Books, it didn’t seem so bad… I’m worried about some changes that are taking place with Windows Vista regarding drivers and such so if I choose Windows I want to buy soon before everything comes with Vista pre-loaded.

Please, if you have an opinion in this arena let me know! I know DH has decided Mac is for him which means before too long I’ll get to take one for a test drive… But are there knitting programs out there that you can’t live without that are not available for Macs? What are you using for photo editing? Can I limp along for another 6 months or so without Adobe or just using Adobe occassionally on my desktop machine? Does the screen seem too small for photo editing?

I’ll be back next week with much more Christmas stories and pictures. But now I have to make room on my hard drive for the ~200 photos I took on our trip and sort through them.

Thanks to all of you who pulled for good driving weather for us. We really appreciated it!

11 Comments »

Comment by Chris

December 28, 2006 @ 10:41 pm

Yay!!! I’m glad you hit the window of opportunity, even though it didn’t look promising for a while… Um, no clue on the Windows/Mac debate… I’ve always been Windows and haven’t paid any attention to the Vista thing.

Comment by Cathy

December 28, 2006 @ 11:08 pm

I am relieved you made it back before this blizzard hit.

Comment by Carole

December 29, 2006 @ 6:39 am

Glad you made it there and back safely. Happy New Year!

Comment by vanessa

December 29, 2006 @ 8:04 am

have you tried google’s picassa for photo editing? it’s free, and i used it when i couldn’t get my adobe to work right.

Comment by Melissa

December 29, 2006 @ 8:33 am

No idea on the computer thing, but I’m totally jealous of a new laptop! :)

Comment by Cindy

December 29, 2006 @ 8:52 am

Welcome home. I’ve been thinking about you guys and driving in this weather. Have a great New Year.

Comment by Jess

December 29, 2006 @ 9:18 am

I’m glad you made it there and back safely, and home before the storm hits.

I’m a big Mac user, so you can guess what I’ll recommend ;-) I don’t know much about photo editing or knitting programs for the Mac, I just use iPhoto and no knitting programs. The whole thing with the new Macs being Intel-based does mean that you could run Windows on them and use your Windows-based programs, I believe.

Considering that I haven’t really looked into the whole Mac/Windows on the same machine for a while, you shouldn’t really listen too closely to me. I’m sure that Apple’s website has a ton of information, and it sounds like you’ll be cooped up inside for a while, maybe grab some knitting and sit down to read?

Comment by Rebekah

December 29, 2006 @ 11:31 am

Sorry I have no opinion, but I’m glad you made it home safely.

Comment by ann

December 29, 2006 @ 3:59 pm

I was just hearing the news about the second blizzard out there - so glad to hear you are safe & sound!

Comment by Lizzy B

January 3, 2007 @ 2:22 pm

For the Mac, Aperture is a much less expensive alternative to Adobe Photoshop and my husband has been using it for a few months now and is really liking it.

Comment by Wanda

January 9, 2007 @ 11:31 pm

Glad you were able to make it there and back without incident. Especially with all the crazy snow we’ve been having as of late.

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