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Goodbye Old Friend!


It’s time to retire an old friend. I’m permanently shelving my Dell Mini v9.

The fall of 2009 was the pre-tablet era and all the companies were pushing for smaller laptops. I got the Dell Mini because I researched it and found that I could mod it to run Snow Leopard, the then-current operating system for Macs.

 
My goal was to make it a Mac-like laptop with the sole purpose of running Scrivener. I bought it, installed extra ram, and turned it into a Hackintosh.
 
I got it on November 8th, 2009 and these are the things I’ve written on it these past eight years…
  • Holiday Wars Vol. 1 (pictured in the photo)
  • Finish the Script!
  • Holiday Wars Vol. 2
  • Holiday Wars: Monster Eater
  • Tales of Holiday’s Past (Anthology)
  • Cupcakes vs. Brownies
  • Holiday Wars Vol. 3
  • Mermaids vs. Unicorns
  • Genie vs. Djinn
  • The Eye of Hastur
  • National Cthulhu Eats Spaghetti Day
  • Elderealm Book 1: Wrath of Dragons
  • Outline Your Novel
  • Dinosaurs vs. Robots (short story)
  • The 5 Day Novel
  • Ameriguns
  • Holiday Wars Vol 4.
  • Resist Them
  • Story Pitch
  • The Greyness (short story)
  • Tales of Elderealm Vol 1. (Anthology)
  • Tales of Elderealm Vol 2. (Anthology)
My Dell Mini was my go to system for first drafts and I used it for most rewrites too. For what I paid for it, $195 plus $50 for ram, it has well earned it’s money back. It’s truly been a good companion.
 
UPDATE: I got a few messages asking what laptop I bought. I purchased a refurbished unibody MacBook for $140. It came out in 2009 but has been restored with a new battery, an SSD hardrive, and new screen. I also spent an additional $40 to upgrade it to 8 gigs of ram. It’s basically the laptop I would have bought eight years ago instead of the Dell Mini if I had been able to afford it. It’s in great shape, runs Scrivener 3.0 and Vellum without a problem and although I would LOVE a fancier MacBook Pro, I need to save money for editing (I have at minimum 6 books coming out next year!) and the new iMac Pro (upgrading my home computer is a MUST).

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