The Powerbook

Last week I bought myself a gently used PowerBook G4 15".
And I love it.
I've been in love with the PowerBook since it came out years ago.
(The backlit keyboard nearly made me cry)
However, I was a bit lazy when I got it and just deleted the user-information from the previous owner.
I did not want to reboot for several reasons: I only have the OS X 10.3 disks and the OS X has since been upgraded to 10.3.9, which would make a reboot useless.
Besides it had Microsoft Office installed by same owner, who held on to the disks, and a cleansweep reboot would erase those as well.
However, after moving my iTunes library and photos and files from the faithful little old iBook, and working like a dream, it started acting up.
One thing is the machine literally screamed like a banshee when Vincent jumped upon the keyboard (I rather appreciated that as he will not do that again), but it started freezing.
And in my little world Macs do not freeze. Ever.
My iBook, after nearly five years has never once frozen or crashed or acted unpleasant.
Not even with a pint of green tea tipped straight down into the keyboard (thank you, Laurenz), or half a glass of red wine in same (which did cause a need for a replacement keyboard as the spacebar and the n and m stopped functioning).
So I do not like a PowerBook freezing.
And I know I should have done the clean reboot from start.
I do not know how the previous owner used it. Or what he has deleted and uninstalled - or how.
(I noticed that the security updates were not updated, for one thing)
Or how that would interfere with my use and my programs.
So I have spent most of today playing with Disk Utility, veryfying and repairing, and verifying and repairing, and veryfying and repairing - and being puzzled and close to panicking.
And intensely stubborn.
Even ended up using fsck.
And now I can finally install OS X.
And my beautiful machine is humming merrily next to me.
I still love it.
And the brilliant simplicity of Apple support.

And this is how the cats have spent today.