Network My Technology, Penny Vincenzi: In mourning for my Mac

The best-selling novelist Penny Vincenzi was nearly lost for words when her ageing Apple finally expired

IT'S THE most beautiful little machine, which sadly isn't made anymore. But they are so remarkable and they even feature in the New York Museum of Modern Art . It was like a love affair from the very start. I switched it on and a little face came on, smiling at me.

I bought it in the mid-Eighties, when everyone else had Amstrads, which seemed very complicated to me. Whereas the Mac is so simple. It's so tiny. They are about half the size of the latest Macintosh computer, the iMac. It just won my heart, even though it's obviously very slow by modern standards, and you can't do anything else on it.

But the other morning I switched the Macintosh on and instead of a smiling grey face was a black screen. Instead of saying welcome, it was hieroglyphics, as though it had died. It was sad. But I was also quite glad because it meant I wasn't going to have to make the decision to replace it with a newer version. It's like having a dog put to sleep - it's so much nicer if it just dies. I had written eight books on it, which at a modest estimate is three million words, so I think it was tired.

When I bought it with my first advance in 1988, I had been against having a computer. I am a Luddite and so unmechanical that I can't even use a tin-opener. Hopeless. But this was simply like a typewriter with a mouse. I found it was just the same to write with.

I had written two books on the typewriter, not novels but what I would call journalist's books. It was so traumatic to have to quite literally cut and paste. I wouldn't have written nearly so much on the typewriter, and it would certainly have taken me much longer.

I never got over being able to cut and paste on the Macintosh SE. When you are a child, you'd listen to the radio and imagine a little man playing the orchestra inside the box. It's the same with the computer, except little people running around with blocks of words. I adjusted to writing on it really easily.

I loved the fact it was so small and didn't take up half my desk - and it is a beautiful piece of design. It was portable, I could take it up and down the M4 with me, to and from my cottage in Wales. I would get it out of the car, switch it on, and there was a little chirrup. Marvellous.

I have carried on being fond of Macs, and now have an Apple laptop and I am a bit besotted with that. It's like taking a new lover. I got it about a year ago.

I have taken it to all sorts of places with me. It is incredible value. They were very expensive in their day: the Macintosh SE cost twice what I paid for the iMac. People said I was mad to have spent all that money.

My husband is incredibly into the computer, and has brainwashed me into backing everything up. I remember how I had just finished my first book and then the hard disk crashed. A man came round to take a look, his silences got longer and longer and then he asked me in a rather awkward voice how much I had written. He went pale. Fortunately, I had two back-up copies. There is one negative aspect, which I think also applies to the way Apple Macintoshes are used in art departments. You can over-edit and over-design. If you write on a typewriter, you just write and it's done. And visually, it produces a lot of sameness in the art departments. I just edit once, and then leave it. I always edit the text I wrote the day before, and then leave it, because you can overdo it.

But the fact that you can take a whole chunk out without pressing more than six buttons still seems wonderful to me.

I haven't got e-mail, but I have no desire to have it whatsoever. I just want a machine that can help me write my books. What's wrong with ringing me up?

Penny Vincenzi's new novel, `Almost a Crime', is published on 31 August by Orion, price pounds 16.99