Tiger healthy, Powerbook sick

So I put Mac OS X Tiger on my laptop. Overall, I like it.

There are many subtle user interface changes; some of them I like, some of them I don’t like. I was expecting Dashboard to be cooler than it is. I’m not sure I’ll ever use it. The Spotlight thing is kind of cool though. Tiger also seems to manage power better so that my battery lasts longer.

My fun with Tiger was overshadowed by news of my laptop’s impending hard drive failure. My hard drive has been making funny sounds for a few months (a weird buzzing sound that is amplified when I move it around) and this week finally started to bite it. Before installing Tiger, my machine really started to slow down because of weird hard drive problems. I also started hearing little “ping” sounds coming from the hard drive. Anyway, the Tiger reformat and reinstall seems to have bought me some time, but the days are numbered. The Apple Disk Utitlity says that the hardware sensors on the drive are detecting certain doom.

It’s a good thing I’m all backed up right now. I’m not always diligent about backing up, but luckily I have been lately.

I think I might go with the Hitachi 7K100 60GB 7200RPM drive. I’ve heard it’s a bit noisy, but the Seagate Momentis drives that are supposed to be super quiet are like twice the price. Screw that. I can tolerate some noise. I looked at a really detailed do-it-yourself install manual, and I’m a bit nervous about it, but I think I’ll put it in myself. The worst thing that can happen is I fry my laptop and I have to buy a new Intel MacBook, right? Either way, the outcome isn’t too bad.