Dead Mac blues

It hasn’t been all hi-fi fun here, unfortunately. Esta’s PowerBook, which used to be my old faithful G3, has bitten the dust. It won’t boot any more. I made an appointment for her at the Cambridge Apple Store, and they indicated that (a) it needed some internal power circuitry replaced, which would set her back a few Franklins, and (b) they could have the fix done in seven business days. Oy.

They were pretty nice about suggesting some alternatives, though, including a recommendation for an alternative local repair shop and (most surprisingly) an Apple Store near Richmond that she didn’t know existed. (Who knew that Short Pump was Apple Store material?) She’ll end up going with the latter, based on the time factor.

In the meantime, we have discovered what Fast User Switching is made for—allowing guests to surf the web, check email, iChat, and upload digital photos without changing all their host’s settings.

Denon, de non psallibus

denon dp-45F, or rather the dp-47f which is essentially the same thing

Esta, who arrived on Wednesday evening for a few days of R and R, is helping me with a very important task: auditioning a new turntable. A coworker was looking to unload a circa 1983 Denon DP-45F that hadn’t been played in eleven years.

So far the results have been mixed. On the plus side, the full automatic action is smooth, and the sound can be quite good, even without the grounding strap connected. On the minus side, the unit is an inch or so too deep for our AV shelf, meaning I would need to do another cutout (if I could and still be able to lift the glass on the turntable). More damningly, the thing skips on brand new records. I’m not sure if that’s because it needs a new stylus, because it doesn’t like 180 gram vinyl, or what. I’ll play with it a little more this weekend and see if I can isolate the problem without shelling out the money for a new stylus or cartridge (which could be substantial, according to this thread).

It is a sweet looking turntable though.