Dear PowerBook,

When you first came, I remember lugging you in a black trash bag all the way from Toa Payoh to Esplanade and then to Clementi. You were damn heavy. But when I finally took you out, you looked so beautiful. The slight reflection of light on your matte steel surface. I so wanted to turn it on but I left you to charge for the night before I can get to hear the chime.

The next day, I pressed the button and “whaung” rang the chime. Ah… such a lovely sound. You were so fast and in seconds, you were booted up! I was so proud to be your owner.

When I brought you to school, I was so proud of you, being metal unlike the white plastic ones. I downloaded apps and made you a super computer, making life a breeze for me. Together we played Worms Armageddon, Star Wars, Warcraft and many other games. When I was bored, we watched countless movies and listened to many gigabytes of music.

Aside from having fun, we did work too. When other laptops lagged, their owners will bang in frustration but with you, i always “sayang-ed” you encouragingly and it always worked. You’ve been with me through photoshop files that were 2-3 hundred mb of size, rendering huge movie files and running photoshop, flash and illustrator all at once.

But now, it is time to move on. No, please understand that I have no choice. You are on permanent life support now and can’t function without being hooked on to the power. You lag when I play youtube videos. I know that you can still run photoshop flash and illustrator at the same time but just not at that speed you used to do it at. And you are slowly unable to support Mr Wacom and his capability of moving the cursor around with ease. 

Webpages are taking a long time to load and when I install the latest available version of Opera that you can take, Opera warns me that it’s not safe to use outdated versions. You are running OSX 10.4 when it’s now 10.6 and soon, it will be 10.7. The lion is no matter what the king of the jungle. The tiger is from India…. 

I will miss you and I will always remember the days and nights that we spent together. 

You are the cute 12” laptop that I’ve had and loved. Thank you PowerBook. You will always be HJ’s PB and I will miss you. After I finish this one last design on you, I shall be moving on to a MacBook Pro. It will learn of your glorious past and strive on with me for a better future. Bye PowerBook.

Your Owner and Friend,
Hong Jun