Struggling Through a Life of Privilege

For my birthday I asked for, and received, an MBox. For those of you who have no idea what that is, I shall briefly explain.

An MBox is a little box that hooks into a computer via the USB port. To the MBox, one can connect all manner of instruments and microphones. The MBox comes with Pro Tools LE, which is multi-track recording software. With the MBox and Pro Tools, I could, theoretically, produce and entire song with 2 guitar parts, bass, drums, vocals, and backup vocals all by myself. Theoretically.

When I got the MBox, I was understandably excited. Yay! Time to start recording. Unfortunately, I discovered that my poor old computer wasn't fast enough to run the software. It worked, but very poorly.

No problem. I'm employed. It's my birthday. I'll buy myself a new computer. I'm more than due. So I trekked down to Fry's and decided to buy a Compaq SR1250NX desktop. A better deal could not be found. Even building it myself would be more expensive.

Problem. I got the computer home, and Pro Tools decides to be an ass. I can record for roughly 15 seconds before it gives me an error. While I can't say I'm a verbose or prolific songwriter, I do require more than 15 seconds to get my ideas down.

Screw the MBox! I decided to send it back, but since my friend wanted to see it, I took it to his house first. I installed the software on his computer (which is half as fast as my new one, with LESS than the minimum ram requirement) and it worked beautifully. Screw Compaq!! I love the MBox. In 4 hours we recorded a very professional-sounding flamenco song. And let me tell you, it's hard to record an acoustic instrument and have it sound good. Plus there was some editing and splicing involved. It worked great. And now I want it to work for me.

So now the MBox is staying, and the computer is going back to Fry's. And I have to find a new, new computer. One which will let me play with my newly beloved MBox.