OK, well maybe need is a bit of a strong term, but my trusty macbook is showing its age. One of the new features in iTunes is that it will automatically take higher bitrate songs and convert them to 128k bitrates when you transfer them to an ipod. Basically, the higher the bitrate the song is encoded, the higher the quality of the audio, but the more space it takes up. Being a inveterate audio snob, most of my collection has been ripped at 256k and sometimes higher, but I’ll ever hear the difference between that and 128k in the car or on the go with my iPod. So this new feature is great, I can save a ton of space on my ipod (which equals more songs on my ipod) and still maintain the higher quality at home.
So why do I need a new computer? I set my ipod up to sync before I went to bed, I knew this was going to take a while to do, I figured that overnight would be plenty of time. Wrong. Here it is 10 hours later and it’s still churning away. It still has 1000 songs to go! This is the first big, processor intensive task I’ve had to do, and my poor computer just is a bit long in the tooth for it. I’ve had my macbook for about 4 years now, so I guess it’s time, but it’s going to take me several months before I can pop for a new one. SIGH… It’s the curse of working with new, shiny computers all day, the desire never has time to go away…