Unplug your Christmas Tree

The computers are going to go to a company that specializes in recovering computers from disasters (water, etc). The insurance guy that looked at them said they were probably toast, but that if they can be salvaged, they will be. The hard drives are actually <b>not</b> what I am worried about - they are sealed and the chances that they were damaged by smoke are extremely small. What I'm worried about is the insurance people undervaluing my equipment. For example - the PowerMac cost over $4,000 and I still owe about $2,000 on it. If you bought it now though, it would cost around $1,500. Obviously I don't want to be in that situation. My iBook was $1,300 when I bought it, plus $200 for the hard drive upgrade, $100 for the wireless card, $300 for the base station and $200 for the RAM - about $2,100. If they value it at less, I need to shop around on eBay and whatnot, and that's not really acceptable. I really need to buy new, and to buy new, I'll need to spend about the same amount of money.

My main machine, with monitor and speakers, came out to around $3,000. What if they value it at less?

The <b>good</b> thing about this (computer-wise) is that I don't have to accept anything that's in any less than "like-new" condition. If I can smell smoke on it, I don't have to accept it - but I will <b>still get to keep it</b>. So if my PowerMac doesn't smell great but works fine, I will still get money for it as well as keeping the PowerMac. So I might end up on top. But I would hardly say that it's worth the hassle.

The only computer that is <b>definitely</b> shot is my iBook. I will hopefully get a replacement for it soon. The others, I am not sure about.

Anyway... yeah, all in all, lucky, but really only in the sense that no one was hurt. As I said before, I lost pretty much <b>ALL</b> of my stuff. Which, quite frankly, fucking sucks.

I'll be at work for a while tomorrow, and I'll write more then. Thanks for the kind words.

--dave