Hours before my recent Qwest gig, I was working to pull together a slide show. They weren't sure I would be able to show it, but I wanted to have something on hand - some bright and shining screens from the future of fun as I saw it in Korea and Japan. My firewire drive wouldn't come online through my Thinkpad X21, and when it finally did, I couldn't run ACDSee to browse the photos. Then Winamp 2.91 started to crash. I suspect it was some recently installed MacAfee virus software. Either way, my small processor was starting to buckle under the multitasking road warrior load I'd been carrying for three years.

I learned a few years back - your computer stays fast as long as you don't update the software. But I'd love to update some things on my computer. Play with Photoshop 7. Use the latest version of Office. And now my computer was starting to impact my ability to work. The 20 gigabyte hard drive is too small to carry my photo archives, and if it can't read or write to an external drive, I'm in trouble working to pull together my presentations and articles.

So I started thinking about another ThinkPad. This week's computer faltering coincided neatly with some recent reading about the Thinkpad X40 on Gizmodo (that's a picture of me standing with Gizmodo editor Peter Rojas). Here are some recent pictures, with an article in Japanese, about that computer: pictures and slot view. Apparently, the X40 will be available in the US this month.

This new IBM machine looks to be an appealing series of improvements - it has a built-in SD card reader (SD cards used both by my Treo, and Optio camera). Built-in wireless internet access. Faster. Smaller! Is there Firewire? Definitely USB 2.

More of the same, but better. And I'm remembering how many times I've had my computer serviced, in the United States in Japan. IBM fixing my machine various times without too many questions (or maybe just a bit of Keigo). The power and assurance of that global brand has been invaluable for this traveller.

But I wouldn't buy a Thinkpad to play games. I have a desktop PC for that, and increasingly, I have an XBox for that. And in a way, a ThinkPad reflects more of the same. Stabilization. Moving forward as a sleek road reporter.

Then I remember my other recent computing urge - after carrying a video camera through Korea, Japan and Chicago, taping interviews and art shots in California, I want to start editing videos and turning out polished clips for download or maybe even DVDs.

The defining moment here was a visit to Alex Nieminen in Helsinki last August. We sat down on his couch and surfed a DVD he'd made of a recent scuba trip. Photos, video clips, titles, subtitles, music, menus. It was a blast! His own trip DVD, turned out in a few weekends of tinkering after his trip. It was, he ribbed me, exceedingly easy to put together on his Macintosh computer.

I have a nice PC desktop I bought mid-2003. Definitely fast enough to handle this sort of thing, I figured. So I downloaded Microsoft's answer to Apple's iMovie, Movie Maker, and worked to make a few videos (see some shorts in my Korea coverage. I couldn't get subtitles to work, and I couldn't convince the software to slowly scroll an Ikkyu haiku with a moving image in the background. Too many training wheels! And Movie Maker refuses to read data from my Sony PC101 digital video camera.

So I've been fantasizing over the last few months that I might get a fast Mac in my house to begin to pull from the growing stack of tapes. The fantasy of a computer that can edit video as soon as I turn it on. And maybe splurging for Final Cut Pro, so I can make something more complicated with pop-up windows, layers of information. The multimedia mis en scene aesthetic of the Pillow Book applied to my life and travels.

Maybe a desktop, I reasoned. More power, and I wouldn't really edit video on the road, right? But thinking about the MEM Project in Shibuya and Sagan or the Small Hours in Oakland, I love watching my friends share rich media from their PowerBooks. When I think about the compelling live digital performances I've seen in the last few years, nearly all have been been driven off a modern Macintosh.

So I've started to consider getting a Macintosh laptop. If you're going to make media, have the potential for media making wherever you are. Especially if your schedule includes San Diego, Chicago, London and Paris before the end of February. Why leave your big iron at home?

Wouldn't that mean switching my email, contacts, calendar, hotsyncing, mp3s, photos, articles, financial data from PC to Mac? If it's my road machine. Or at least sharing all that information between two operating systems, at home and on the road? Oh the complexity! I trembled as I imagined adding OSX to the symphony of devices and operating systems that already demand my time and reward me with tinkering potential.

But why get a new computer if you're not going to immerse yourself in using it? The idea of becoming a primarily Macintosh user began to appeal to me as a tasty challenge. I realized I have a large untapped part of my community that are deep Macintosh lovers. Ryan, Adam, Chris, Howard, and most of the personal filers - many of the people I respect as creative technological citizens are avid Mac users. There's a culture of hacking, trading applications. People helping other folks. Casual media making. Integrated Unix shell!

What's not there? Terrific support for the Treo 600, apps like Pocket Library. Games - most of my gaming friends look horrified and almost angry when I talk about switching. And switching would mean losing some compatibility with years of Quickening, photo cataloging with ACDSee, MP3 cataloging with WinAmp 5. Increasingly my data lives on the internet, so maybe that will help me bridge the gap between Outlook and whatever I might use on the Mac.

Ultimately it boils down to this - it's not a question of which platform to join, but which community. Business and games, or filmmaking musicians? If I look at my life as a series of phases, the last time I owned a Mac was 1998 - a Duo 2300c. Maybe it's time for a switch back. An experiment! An adventure. Something challenging, changing my perspective. Imagine my talks with video clips - last week in Seoul, I saw this... !

Another voice chimes in just then, asking me if I want to really challenge myself technically. If I bought another ThinkPad, I would be quickly up and running fast, stable as I've set myself up for years. Do I really want a technological challenge of adjusting my life for Apple, or shouldn't I stay focused on challenges of writing and productivity? Do I really expect to make a lot of videos on the road? Most of the time, I'm a writer.

But that's staid talk. Fortunately I still have debts to pay off - only when I'm in the black will I consider buying a new machine. That should be a few months. I'll carry this question with me for the next few weeks, wondering what kind of creative computer user I want to be. Today, I'm leaning towards a 15" Powerbook.