Searching for Answers to Life's Persistent Questions

[mamculuna]

Pondering two existential questions, and welcoming any and all opinions:

1. Should I color my hair? I think my son and his partner were voting yes, last time I saw them. Lots of my friends are naturally gray, but....

1 a. If so, what color?

2. My elderly laptop needs to go to the great recycler in the sky. I've always had PC's but keep hearing Mac is better. Should I get a Mac?

2 a. see 1a. White is cheaper, but aluminum is recyclable, maybe. (not true for 1a, though)

Comments

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

1. I think your gray hair is beautiful! It's more like silver than gray.
2. I know very little about Mac..I have a PC.

Not a lot of help, eh?
:)

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the good hair vote. I really don't want to mess with color, but people like you look really good with it.

[usedtobeljs]

If you have gorgeous silver hair, keep it.

If you've always wanted hair a certain color, though, I'd say go for it. (I personally am happiest with auburn hair, although my original hair color was brown in winter, strawberry-blonde in summer. ;-))

[hugs]

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Actually, I've always been fine with my sort of brownish hair that got gold sunstreaks, but now it's mostly streaked with gray. When I see myself in the window beside my sister who has hers colored auburn, I think I look lots older, but then I'm not sure that's a problem.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I use both Mac and PC on a daily basis. Using a PC is mostly OK though I don't think Windows (XP in my case) is as intuitive as Mac OS. I would not like to have to maintain/trouble shoot a Windows network or a Windows PC but then I have a bunch of techies in Mumbai who do that for me. I have no trouble at all maintaining and fixing my Mac based home network.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Good point--I have to do my own maintaining. I'm used to the work on a PC, but it is a lot of work. Just spent the last two and a half hours with CCleaner and Search & Destroy, and have Norton yet to go. Just avoiding that on a weekly basis would be worth the extra expense, I think. I'll still have to maintain some PC's unless my husband can convert, though, but the laptop is mine alone.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I don't have to do any routine maintenance on the Macs and we have never had a virus/worm problem. The ther nice Mac feature is Time Machine which is the simplest way of regularly backing up a hard drive I have ever seen. Basically you hook up an external hard drive (or use the wireless version though that's quite a bit more expensive) and your system does an incremental back up every hour. If you lose a file but know that you had it last Wednesday you can just go to last Wednesday on your back up drive and find it.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

The online version sounds wonderful. I have that for the desktop through Dell, but only an external for the laptop--which of course I keep in my laptop bag, so if that's stolen, it's all gone.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I love my mother's silver-and-brown hair. I think it's beautiful, and she looks younger than a lot of people who are dyeing their hair. I hope mine is half as nice when I'm her age. I did a happy dance when I found my first two gray hairs right after my birthday last year. (My dad and dd_b swear they are blonde hairs. They are party-poopers.)

However, the question is not what I love on my mom, but what you love on you. I would say if you can come up with something you actively want for a hair color, that seems like it would be pretty or fun, that would be worthwhile, or at least more so than doing it to avoid gray. There's nothing wrong with having gray hair.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I think I probably do look older with gray next to my face, and probably that's what bothers my son--like everybody, he'd like his parents not to change. But I don't mind looking my age. And my husband, bless him, is one of those guys who doesn't see me as I am today, but always as I was when we were first married. And I'm not looking for jobs, so I'm feeling like staying as I am. But thanks for reinforcing that sense!

[rebekahroxanna.livejournal.com]

When I had my old hair, it was brownish with gold highlights. I had it highlighted. Expensive, but I did it only about every 3-4 months because the colors blended so well that I didn't have a root problem. Now mine is mostly gray and I hate it. It's an awful gray, in my opinion.

All gray hair makes women look older. But there comes a point when dyed hair no longer looks good either.

Mac, of course.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

My sister colors hers and looks younger, but might anyway--and as I said above, I don't really have a reason to look younger. I can't think of an artificial color that would look good on my hair. I think blondes do well, but with black eyebrows and dark eyes, I can't really go blonde. That leaves the strange shades of brown, or else auburn, and I don't think auburn would work well for me, either.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

As I've long known, gray hair is much nicer than no hair. I like your hair as is. But coloring your hair is your decision, not mine nor your son's.

Mac's unfortunately are and have been for a long time very expensive for what you get. Buy yourself a another nice PC and when it too goes to the great recycler, you'll have had the use of all the rest of the money for other things.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

The expense is what concerned me, too, but pricing out the Mac Book and the Inspiron, there's not a great difference anymore. They both wind up at around $1400 when you add in the memory and the service agreement. So I'm begiinning to think I'll try one Mac for a while.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

I've done well having my original color as a base and frosting it. It has been interesting, anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

I think if I colored, I'd do a blonde over the gray, which is essentially what my original sun-streaked hair was like. But I'm getting votes for gray from the people who've actually seen it, so may stay with that. Lots cheaper!

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Me, duh.

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

Strongly prefer PCs myself, but that's just me. However, I do not like Vista and have had very few problems with XP. I have heard that the new Windows 7 system coming out within the next year (it's in beta currently) may actually be very good. One reviewer I read a few months back said that he preferred it to the current Mac OS-- and this fellow was primarily a Mac user.

( Oddly, Microsoft seems to do well with every other OS they come up with-- 3.1, good / 95, bad / 98, good / ME, bad / XP, good / Vista, bad )

I don't care for laptops, but if I had to buy one right this minute I'd probably try to find a used one running XP and keep it until Windows 7 is out and then check that OS out more carefully.

For you, I'd suggest finding a good local store that sells both Mac and PC and give 'em both a lengthy spin.

No opinion on the hair except to say do whatever makes you happy. What other people think isn't all that critical IMO.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I have to say that I haven't wanted to get involved with Vista--my XP experience has been OK, but Vista doesn't look good. If I can get my old system to limp along until the Windows 7 comes out, that sounds promising.

And you are right about other people's opinions.

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

New Consumer Reports just came in the mail today-- cover article is about computers. They must have been thinking of you!

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I will look at it! I wouldn't have thought of it, so thanks for reminding me.