I have been having some CPU issues lately with the good ol’ laptop and trying to decide what to do. I have a 15” MacBook Pro that is s few years old that is currently running on Mac OS X Version 10.4.11. Pretty old, since Mac will be rolling out Snow Leopard in September. I’m running on about 75 to 80% capacity on the hard drive, I can get an external hard drive to free up space, so not too worried about that aspect. A main problem is that I need a new battery. I have to keep it plugged in at all times in order to keep it charged, basically tethering me and negating the “mobility” a laptop is supposed to provide. REALLY annoying.

An other issue is that I am running on iLife ’06, this suite includes iPhoto, GarageBand, iDVD, iMovie, and most importantly iWeb, which I use to publish this site. It’s gotten to the point where I have to reload my entire site every time I update it. Very annoying! It also has weird errors where it thinks that it doesn’t update the site, when in fact it does. I’ve done patches and fixes for the program, but it is just so outdated that it doesn’t help much. Plus, I don’t have the option to add widgets or publish remotely. Not to mention I am pretty bored with the style options. I also would like to get my hands on the new iPhoto which seems to be much easier to navigate and search for photos that the one I am currently running. Plus the editing and effects options seem to have a little more muscle.

Problem is that in order to upgrade to iLife ’09, I need to be running Mac OS x v10.5.6 or later. So, I’d have to upgrade my OS as well as iLife. The current price for Leopard is $129 (which will be replaced in a few months with Snow Leopard) and iLife ’09 is $99. Plus the new battery is an additional $129. Not to mention an external hard drive that would be another $150 or so. See how it is adding up? I don’t really know if it is worth it to spend $500 on a this one or replace it with a new one for about $500 more? Or, I could just get the new battery and suck it up with the current OS and iPhoto and possibly move my website to Typepad, SquareSpace, or some other external publishing site, but then I’d have to pay a monthly fee for it, why would I do that when I already pay $100 a year for MobileMe? (Which I really love, even though I can’t use it to its full advantage with my current OS.) Ugh. Not sure what to do, any suggestions?