Our lovely little laptop died today. The now extinct 13-inch PowerBook G4 that we bought three years ago gave up today when the hard drive failed. The guy at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store did some diagnostics and then pointed to the screen and said, “Oh, that’s bad.”

Replacing the hard drive is about a third of the cost of a brand new laptop, so we’re seriously considering the upgrade. We’re not loaded with cash at the moment, but I hate the idea of pouring money into such an old machine. But I doubt we can last long without it, so we’ll probably be doing something pretty quick.

I didn’t have much of importance on the laptop, but Abby did have a few things it’ll suck to lose. We do have some of it backed up, so it shouldn’t be a total loss. But it is a pain. It’s a good reminder to make sure you’re backing up. This is one reason why I like services like Flickr–it serves as a backup for all those photos. If my house burned to the ground I wouldn’t lose 4,000+ photos.

I finally played the Nintendo Wii on Saturday. Now I know what all the fuss is about. I doubt I’ll rush out and buy one, but the temptation is definitely there. It’s very much a video game system for the non-gamer. The concept of actually doing something active to play a video game instead of just sitting there pushing buttons is great. Though the temptation to play virtual games instead of real ones is a bit scary (especially when we’re talking about the basics: bowling, golf, baseball, fishing, ping pong, billiards, etc.).

My favorite was Wii boxing. Very stress relieving. I had two fights and quickly realized how someone could pull a muscle playing a video game. I also realized I have a strong right but my left if practically worthless. Something to keep in mind if you ever have to fight me.

New York Magazine has an interesting profile on Steve Jobs that focuses on the new iPhone, which hits the streets June 29. I haven’t seen such lust for a tech product before, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it for a cell phone. But for everything Apple is doing right with the iPhone, there are a few dozen things that could cause the whole wonderful experiment to implode. Like being forced to work with AT&T for starters:

For 30 years, Jobs has hewn to the conviction that Apple’s strength is that, as he puts it, the company makes “the whole banana”—hardware, software, and everything in between. This approach is no small part of the reason that the Mac was trounced in the PC market by Windows. On the other hand, it explains why Apple thumped everyone with the iPod. Whatever its virtues and demerits, however, the whole banana has been Jobs’s ideological touchstone. And now he is entering a business where success or failure will depend on the efficiency and savvy of not just another company, but of AT&T. Oy vey.

For what it’s worth, I have AT&T for my cell phone service. It’s not bad (not brilliant either). My phone is crap, but I think that’s Motorola’s fault (and that’s probably a defective deal–my wife’s phone of the same model works fine).