Pending withdrawal symptoms

I have finally bitten the bullet on getting my MacBook Pro fixed, and hopefully the picture is not indicative of what is to come.  For over a year now it has been having difficulties.  The hard disk was loaded to near capacity so I unloaded my photo files to a Raid set up in the hope of improving things.  Unfortunately I had made too many assumptions about OS disk management so when I attempted to defrag the disk the error message told me it was too fragmented.  I think it would have liked to be more direct, possibly sarcastic but the message library is too limited.  Loading time is terrible and I am getting the odd crash, all of which are weak signals, going on strong, that I have to make a change.

Now I put up with it because I had decided to change the computer this year, its over three years old and well used.  The problem is I couldn't make up my mind between the new Retina MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air or possible a more revolutionary solution involving an iMac for home with the iPad for trips.  Everyone I asked gave different advice and there are rumours of changes coming anyway so waiting around a bit might make sense.  

So thanks to Friso and Laurie I decided to take an interim solution and phoned a local supplier who will take my Pro away on Monday and fit it out with a 1tb disk, a big improvement from the 350gb I had before.  It means I can move the Aperture Library back as well as my full music library.  It also means I can keep the 17″ screen which I have got used to and wait for SSD technology to improve,along with release of the Apple watch and other changes.  A year's lease of life for under £200 is a good deal.  The only problem is the loss of Pro for 2/3 days next week.  It gets picked up on Monday and I then have to wait.

In order the manage this enforced absence, the longest time I will have been without a laptop of some type in two decades or more, I have resolved to spend Monday and Tuesday completing the South Downs Way.  The last two sections have no public transport option in the middle, but there is a good pub with rooms.  So Monday I will drop off a bag there before parking at Petersfield and walking back to the pub.  Tuesday I compete the way to Winchester and then pick up my bag before going home.  Hopefully, Wednesday will see me using Time Machine to get everything back up and running again.  The enforced absence on the hills means that I won't be fretting around the house without access to a computer.

So I will have email access, but I will be more restricted than usual. I'm going to forward post blogs as I don't want to get behind again with the daily routine.  If nothing goes wrong normal service will be resumed by Thursday.