We had been a proud, satisfied owner of an Apple PowerBook for a little over two years (and a blue-and-white G3 for five years before that) when it all went quickly downhill last November. Our computer started making these frightening, crackling, static, grinding noises, accompanied by nonsensical beeps, and then it crashed hard. We did an "erase and reinstall," which bought us about two weeks. Then, we had to pay our first somewhat quick......

So anybody who followed our coverage of South by Southwest knows that after touching down in the Southland our selfless and peaceful PowerBook up and died on us. Granted, we've given that PowerBook something of a beating since we got over a year ago -- it's been dropped, scratched, smacked around and otherwise tortured. And when it died, we almost thought about looking into the market for a USB-powered crown of thorns. As our......