Will work for Macs

For the third time in my life now, I've been directly involved in the purchase of a new Macintosh computer.

The first was my first, an iBook G4 that still serves as my home base computer. The other was helping Katie buy an iMac.

But this one, a 15" MacBook Pro, is strictly professional. It's the result of our credit union's umbrella organization, the Jackson Co-Op, taking a chance on my design skills and hiring me as a contract freelancer.

The deal goes something like this: my design skills will be available to non-profits as a Jackson Co-Op service. I'll make whatever they need, like newsletters, web sites, and - our specialty - giant paper banners. I'll work on my own, away from work, and the entire thing will be run from the new Mac.

Sure, the extra money will help. And I'll get a chance to stretch my marketing muscles beyond the credit union. But the new Mac is really what sealed the deal.

And man, it's a beauty. Fifteen inches of enclosed aluminum, a complete Adobe Create Suite 4 package, the world's most advanced and gorgeous operating system, and something to do with all that free time I have.

Right?

I'll be the sole employee of the Jackson Co-Op unless my workload becomes too great for me to handle. If we get super busy, they'll hire someone to work with me.

My freelance work, in the past, has come in fits and spurts. I won't get any jobs (which I get strictly from word of mouth and referrals) for a long time, and then a bunch of people will be looking to get projects done. Just last week I had two going at the same time - one big, and one fairly simple.

The solo freelance work I've done has been more to keep my skills sharp and to help out local non-profits with their marketing. All too often, I've come across a brochure or flyer and though, "Jeez, they need some help." Some organizations are smart enough to realize this themselves, so they give me a ring.

And that's not to say I'm some super local talent. There are tons of way more talented designers in Jackson. You just get what you pay for. I purposefully charge a bare-bones rate just to help the non-profits out. I asked for double from for-profit companies because, hey, they can afford it.

Now, I'll still be doing freelance work, but under the guise of another not-for-profit organization. It'll no longer be Dave Lawrence, for hire. It'll be the Jackson Co-Op, and this fella Dave Lawrence, for hire.

But golly. A new MacBook Pro serving as the base of operations? In this case, it can hardly be called "work."

I'm a bit nervous about the workload. I know I'll have to give up a few things, (Newton Poetry may have a few fewer articles each week, for instance) but the deal works out on a bunch of different fronts. I'll be stashing away extra money, helping out local groups, and...oh yes...the Mac thing.

Here I had planned on grabbing a new iMac after the latest operating system, OS X 10.6, comes out. I'll probably still do that, but now I'll have an easier time paying for it, and I'll familiarize myself with OS X 10.5 Leopard (I've been running OS X 10.4 Tiger on all my Macs).

So things should get interesting. In the meantime, I'll be working on infrastructure projects, like the co-op's web site and mailing lists and so on, while reaching out to local organizations and offering my/our services.

All I need is a "Now Open" sign for my window.

On backing up.

The collapse of Washington Mutual was called the "biggest bank failure of all time," meaning that - in today's times - no one is "too big to fail."

So it's good to have a backup plan. That's what blogger Khoi Vinh recommends, especially when it comes to anything you have stored online.

This advice is applicable to most areas of our lives: fire escape plans, fire-proof lock boxes for valuables, generators for power outages, etc. Planning, "just in case," can be a real lifesaver.

Just this week, I had an instance at work where I'm glad we made a backup plan. Our marketing department stores our files (ads, newsletters, web site graphics, etc.) on a network disk. That network disk has failed before, and the first time we had no backup plan. We lost all our files in an instant. Then we started to store our files on our work computers, and copy them to the network disk. But that didn't always happen, so when our network drive went down again, Marketing had a big scare. Luckily, we were able to recover most (but still not all) of our files.

After that crash, we bought an external hard drive to backup all of our files. I do this personally every other day or so: move files from the network disk to the external disk. So when we lost our network drive again this week (thankfully, only briefly), I didn't freak out. We had a backup plan.

Do you? If you store files online, like I do all over the place on Flickr or in my Gmail account, do you have them stored somewhere physical? What about your money? Do you have a few dollars of spare cash hidden somewhere, just in case? Maybe a spare gas can for those "uh oh" moments?

My brain seems to be in constant survival mode. I'm constantly backing up my Mac files, regularly buying canned goods, having my trusty sword available for intruders, and keeping food on me at all times. But there's always more I can do.

Vinh's bigger point is that, anymore, no one is "too big to fail":

The size of a company is certainly not a reliable shield against failure, but being small doesn't necessarily guarantee a company will be around in the long term, either. I just don't think that it's realistic to assume that all of the data we're storing online is safe. So a friendly reminder: back up.

He makes the point about online items (Facebook profiles, e-mail messages, banking information), but the point can go further to life in general. Anything can fail.

Things can easily get out of hand. Guys building bunkers in their backyard during the Y2K scare (remember that?) took things a little far. But hey, as long as you've got the storage shelter there, it's one less thing to worry about.

You know, just in case.

You don't have to be a paranoid person to realize that unexpected things happen. A wise person will set time aside to think about the "what ifs" life throws at us, and plan for them as much as possible.

The ol' Mac vs. PC debate - in a nutshell

From John Gruber @ Daring Fireball:

Microsoft looked at the PC market and asked, “How can we make the most money?” Their answer was to sell software to the business market, because that’s where the money is. Pure pragmatism: corporations are conservative, change slowly, and hold compatibility (and low prices) in high regard.

Apple looked at the PC market and asked, “How can we make something better than everything out there?” Their answer was the Macintosh. Pure idealism.

He goes on to say that Apple couldn't have had compatibility AND "insane greatness" at the same time. And it kind of goes along with the story that the Apple folks were a bunch of crazy hippies working on changing the world.

> via Daring Fireball

< a href="Greeting from Bowling Green, OH" >

Does life get much better than having a Sean Connery look-alike ("Penis mightier!") teach you Dreamweaver web design on dual-monitor Mac Pros in a buildling full of glowing, self-aware, high-powered computers?

Nope, not much.

Hanging out in Bowling Green this weekend, learning Dreamweaver and picking up some tips on HTML and CSS, all-the-while enjoying the ability to drag a window across two screens of real estate. This is living.

The above photo isn't what the BGSU Mac Labs really look like, but they give an idea. I'm bringing my camera tomorrow just so I can show them.

But being offsite for learning new knowledge (that's a Dr. Renner term for those that had him) is always a blast. I've found that it gives me the opportunity to talk shop (read: dork stuff) with other human beings, and actually have them understand what I'm saying:

ME: So have you tried the new Dreamweaver after Adobe shut down GoLive.

SEAN CONNERY-ESQUE GUY: Yes, and I've found Dreamweaver is a much better product, although the license won't let me install it on a PC, even though they're both Intel-based.

...and so on. People back at the office would have blood squirting out of their nose after my first sentence. Here, people understand me.

Our class was scheduled to go until 5 p.m. today, but with just me and a lady from Toledo taking the class, we sped through in record time. It's 3 p.m. now, and we've been done for a half-hour.

Tomorrow I'm hanging out with Sean Connery-esque again, and we've had a lot of fun so far. He's a retired business owner who fell in love with computers and decided to spend the rest of his life teaching other people how to use them. He does Office stuff, and Adobe stuff, and says he's catching the Mac bug. I, of course, had plenty to say after that.

I guess it's just refreshing to get away from the everyday and feel like you're still in your element, you know? I could really see myself doing what Sean Connery-esque (his real name is Marek, which is totally cool) does for a living.

But anyway, Andrea and Annie and I are all going out to dinner tonight, right after I purchase some BGSU merchandise (even though, in my heart, I'm more of a Toledo Rockets fan), and then I'll hit the hot tub and wake up to another Waffle House breakfast tomorrow.

Over and out from Ohio.

On good design, and good hard drives.

Maybe I'm a dork, but the instruction manual for Seagate's excellent 500 GB "FreeAgent" external hard drive is a hoot.

I originally bought one over the summer - $100 for 500 GB is a heckuva deal - because my former external hard drive was a piece of crap. It had Firewire, but that's about all it had going for it. The Seagate's hefty 500 gigs would be more than enough space to back up all of my Macs, with room to spare, and the plug-and-play USB is a cinch to use.

So when our network drive at work (the one that held every file ever created by our marketing department) took a dump, our IT department suggested we get an external drive to back up our M:Drive.

Previously, I had been backing up our files on to CD-ROMs, but that's a slow process, and you can't fit much into the 700 MB on the disc. When our network drive crashed, we had to recover files from individual CDs, and my co-workers couldn't all use the same CD at the same time. It was a hassle.

Enter the Seagate. I recommended it after having such a good time with mine: its throbbing orange light mimicking my own sleeping iBook's, its sleek form factor, the way I keep it plugged into my Airport wireless network at all times, accessible from any room in the apartment - plus you can't beat the cost.

Smart people backup their computers, as my experience at work showed. I've been lucky at home: I haven't had to recover any files from my backup plan. No lightning, no acts of god, no thefts - but that doesn't mean I don't backup on a regular basis. Carbon Copy Cloner makes a full, bootable copy of my hard drive, and Apple's own Backup application makes incremental backups of my music, documents, and personal settings. If - Don forbid - something were to happen, I could make a full restore of my entire system.

It's not Time Machine, but it'll do.

When I got the Seagate, I couldn't help but giggle over the design choices the manufacturers made. A little sticker that says "hello" keeps the little cord baggies closed, and when you first open the box a message tells you "If only this box held as much content as your FreeAgent desktop drive." It's the little things.

But the manual is my favorite. It tells you, confidently, that "This won't take long," then keeps track of how many seconds it takes to set the components up. Taking everything out of the box and packages? Thirty-nine seconds. Plug the thing in? A minute. Plug the USB cable into your computer? A minute eleven. The entire thing, according to Seagate, shoudl take 1:36, and its pretty accurate. "Please enjoy" the manual concludes.

How fun!

Good design is not only a joy to behold, but communicates effectively - and, if we're lucky, with humor. The manual does both.

Now I get a spanking-new FreeAgent to play with at work. I'm going to name it "M:Drive 2.0" because I'm a dork like that, and one teammate suggested we burn incense and say prayers to it, just for security's sake. I think it's a great idea.

All hail FreeAgent.

Nov. 1, 2007: Newton syncs with iMac

Sometimes, geek dreams really do come true.

First, some background: I bought an Apple Newton - the first PDA ever invented - almost a year ago, just to play around with it. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to sync it to my Macs. The Newton uses an old serial cable that no one uses anymore.

Then I found a serial-to-USB adapter, but then the Newton's batteries ran dead, with no hope of recharge. So I bought some Sanyo Eneloop pre-charged batteries, and have finally been having some fun with the MessagePad 110.

And for the past few days, I've dug the adapter out and tried syncing it with my laptop and my iMac - with no luck. Then, tonight...




Whala. There it was.

The technical stuff is a little complicated, but long-story-short, I messed around with the hookup settings late tonight and finally, my Newton and iMac are talking.

It's a shame I have to use OS 9 to do everything (my iBook doesn't like the adapter), but now I can do anything, like add events to my Newton calender:




Or names and contact info to my address book:




But the point is, now I have my circa-1993, pre-iPhone organizer up and running:




Now, what to do with it?

That's almost a non-issue. The point is, I got it running, and can control it with other means rather than the handwriting recognition software.

Who needs an iPhone?*





*Last sentence was a joke, totally not serious, made by author who was up too late working on his dorky, obsolete pet project while dreaming of midgets in rainbow jumpsuits doings lines of coke off iPod Nanos. Disregard. Carry on.

Former life department: IT systems analyst

When God was handing out careers, he could have given me a few: journalism, marketing, teaching, PR...and computers, I think.

This was highlighted Friday at work, when one of the managers came up to me - frantic - and asked me why one Word file didn't look like her other Word file.

Now, long have I been the unofficial IT guy in our office. Our true IT department sits across the street in the administrative building. Most employees figure that, instead of waiting for IT to come over and rescue them, they come see me.

So when I went downstairs to help the manager, I hit one button (the "Print Layout View" one in the bottom left corner) and fixed her document, and she sighed with thanks.

Is this what I was put on Earth to do? Help people figure out their computer stuff?

The signs are all there. I remember last winter at Cassandra's house getting into a multiple hour-long conversation with an Italian from New York about which high-powered Mac to buy. He has long survived on G5s, the former king daddies, and was thinking about switching to the new Intel models. As soon as he heard the words "oh-ess-ten" come out of my mouth, I was automatically his expert.

I helped Katie buy her HP laptop. I set up a blueberry iMac G3 for my grandma to learn the Internet. I'm the proud owner of more computers than some small businesses. And I fix stuff at work when it's not even my job.

Now I'm getting into web site creation and blogging, and I'm mulling over choices like what company should host my site, and what should my ".com" name be, and whether to use my current Blogger site or switch to WordPress (which people seem to adore). So many choices.

What's nice about blogging is it satisfies two of my cravings: writing and computers. The journalist in me will always long for an audience and a creative outlet, while learning about how to host my own blog and URL address is exciting in its own right.

And step by step, I'm teaching myself HTML - which I actually enjoy and have fun playing around with.

I wrote about hobbies, and how they often define who we consider ourselves to be; maybe this is my hobby. I'm a computer geek.

My training certainly started like most people my age: Macs in elementary, teaching typing or painting or how to use the trash icon. It's how I first fell in love with SimCity. When I moved in with my dad, and he bought a Packard Bell 486, I tinkered with that machine enough to leave it a smoking husk.

A few weeks ago I went to this guy Curtis's house to check out his Mac museum - a setup in his basement that hosts everything from the original Macintosh and Lisa to a OS X G5 server. I took the two Macs I found at our June e-waste drive, a Quadra and an LCII, and we took them apart and hooked them up and got them running again.

Curtis even showed me how to take apart a Mac SE and put it back together again. Katie and I have been playing "Oregon Trail" in full nine-inch-screen, black-and-white glory. It has "Wheel of Fortune," too, which I plan on playing with grandma.

I do like to workout, and fish, and travel, and argue about politics, and read and write, and I'm acquiring a taste for automobiles - all these are the usual "guy" hobbies, right?

But there's something about a box of chips and spinning disks and blowing fans that tickles the reptilian pleasure center in my brain.

Call me a geek - I'm okay with that. But we have to be passionate about something, and it helps when it's something we're good at.

Fun with iMovie.

It's amazing that, in the almost two years I've had my iBook, I've never messed around with iMovie.

That's part of what makes Apple so successful these days: programs like GarageBand and iPhoto and iMovie can make digital media n00bs like you and I into semi-decent craftspeople.

So, after dinking around last night with some river footage I took on the trip, here's a little something I made.

NOTE: There are parts where I couldn't get the audio to work. So when I'm talking at the camera, just imagine a lot of profanity and ranting.

Shiny and new.

How slick is that?

It's the new iMac, a slight overhaul of the G5 design - and boy is it pretty.

The metal only makes sense: with the Mac Pro, Mac Mini, iPod shuffles and nanos, and Macbook Pros, the aluminum seems to be the new standard.

I like the white, personally. It's served Apple well since the iMac G4 (my favorite), and it looks spiffy on my iBook.

When I'm ready to grab a desktop system, this will be it.

Welcome to the iFamily.

Maybe it's a sickness, but it seems every time I work at the recycling site, I bring home a Mac or two.

Just this past weekend we held an e-waste drive at Jackson's Sam's Club. Early on I spotted an old PowerMac, but the case was cracked and its monitor and peripherals were missing. Later, I go inside to the bathroom and come out - and there's a Mac SE sitting in one of the bins.

Our recycling president, Steve, and I were just talking about his switch to Apple's. I told him about the iMac I found last winter, and how it works perfectly well and now takes care of all my financial number-crunching and a few other writing projects. He must've been looking out for me after our discussion, because he pointed me toward the pitched mini-Mac.

Digging through the computer rubble, I found the original keyboard, mouse, and power cord, as well as a Macintosh Quadra 605 and LC II. Someone, it appeared, had cleaned out their closet.





My first thought, of course, was my resurgent eBay activities: these babies might fetch a decent price in some auction, and here I hadn't paid a thing for them.

But then, with no keyboard or monitor, I wondered if they even worked. These two consumer models are super easy to crack open. Just pop two switches in the back and you're in. I saw they were a little dusty, but that's it.





So I loaded the three Macs into my car and headed home. The Mac SE would be the easiest to check - I just plugged it in, switched it on, and *PING!*





We're in business.

The Apple is so spartan it defies description. A few simple programs, like MacPaint and MacWrite (and even a version of MS Word!), and a bare-bones desktop. That's it. One floppy drive. A 9" black and white screen. Luckily I had a few game discs, like Frogger and Ultima II and III, to try out (they work great). This little thing was too cool.





After letting it sit for a while, I also found it came bundled with a fireworks screen saver. It's running as I type.

I assure you folks that I'm not the only crazy one here. Some people (like these guys) take old computers way more seriously than I do. If I can't find a good use for it, why keep it?

And if I have to make up a "good use" for some of these, like a Macquarium, for instance, then so be it.

So the list right now reads an iBook G4, an iMac G3, an iBook G3 clamshell, two Mac SEs (one working, one destined to be the home of my next goldfish), a Quadra 605, and an LC II. Plus a Newton, an iPod, an a custom built blueberry iMac G3 for grandma.

I'm running out of room.

Thankfully eBay can save me some space and earn me a few extra dollars.

I still have to figure out if the Quadra and the LC II work. All I need to do is hook them up to a monitor (thank you, roommate!), plug in the keyboard and mouse I already have, and switch them on. With a bit of luck, they'll give me the same *PING* the lil' SE did.

My Apple-junkie anniversary

It's SuperBowl 2006 - a bit late this year, but with all the networks copying Fox's Terry, Howie, and the gang-style coverage (Chris Matthews as Jim Brown, the pundits as cocky, witty sportscasters) it's hard to avoid the comparison.

After all, we're voting for teams here. Blue, red, mascots in donkey and elephant form, balloons and confetti, 3,000 soldiers dying by halftime.

The replay comes in every ten minutes or so, with the Dems picking up more and more points as the night goes on. You think your hometeam's quarterback getting booed is bad, imagine facing an electorate that's suspicious instead of cynical.

It's, perhaps, a statement against a Head Coach that governs to only 49% of his team, offense and defense - kind of like being on the wrong side of an oncoming blitz. When your pre-game speech ignites "Uniter, not Divider" statements, and the team finds out you lied through your silver-spoon teeth, well, don't be surprised when the nation finds blood - not Gatorade - on your Starter jacket.

Balance is a good goal to have. The Framers knew this - in fact, most of the source of the tea-party rage was England's all-encompassing power. Rubber stamps are bad, protection of rights against a government that's bound to fail you is good, and we've got a big boot ready if you don't agree. One governing party is like Bill Parcels running the front office, marketing, concessions in the stadium, and still getting off his old, fat, angry ass to coach a team. It's too much of a bad thing.

But not the ball is in the Democrats court, and the game plan doesn't look promising. A dispatch just reported that they've officially taken the House, and with Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (good bye, asshole Santorum), and Rhode Island falling into the Blue Column, the American people have placed an immense amount of maybe-misplaced trust in a party who hasn't had a great idea since LBJ. Good ideas, sure, but not planet-shaking.

We're still waiting for our Immaculate Concession.

Locally, our own Dems Stabenow in the senate and our Governor Granholm keep their seats (Granholm got lucky on that one, mostly because DeVos couldn't outline a plan of any detail or nuance) - and the states around us, those Big Ten burrowing-mammal states, head farther left.

Republicans tried an experiment with more African American candidates, but it's kind of like Terry Bradshaw calling a soccer game - it just doesn't look (or sound) right. The experiment has failed.

The idea of total control has failed too, but I wonder if anyone is listening. The swing back and forth - liberal and conservative, Dem and GOP - wears thin if all you can do is "get out the base," a bunch of loonies I don't trust at all. Call them out of their holes with issues like gay marriage and flag burning, and then hide them away while you give away the treasury to your corporate backers. It's bullshit, and I wish someone had the guts to actually Get Something Done around here. My grandma still doesn't have a job, my city's manufacturing base is crumbling, the media is joining forces into Alliances of Evil (I'll copywrite that one), but some out West still feel like keeping gays from suffering from a lifetime of each other is still issue number one.

Everything is moving Right, it would seem, with candidates like Harold Ford, Jr. in Tennessee appearing as a conservative dressed as a Democrat. Lieberman holds on, Republicans go Neo as it leaves its historical supporters, and no one is looking back at liberals, fearing they'll turn into a pillar of unelectable salt. Christians are all of the sudden caring about the poor and environment, Democrats are touting state's rights, and everyone is trying to bash NAFTA and CAFTA harder than everyone else. Nixon would have loved it, had he not been so fucked up in his paranoid skull, but Bush only has two more years to reap a movement he isn't smart enough to study and understand.

Who knows who to vote for anymore? And who knows who Montana will offer?

I just hope good, responsible governing - not revenge - is in store for the next two years, until we start this whole Hairspray-and-Handshakes Hairball rolling again, but for bigger stakes.

Will we have the gall to fill in the bubble in another presidential election? Jesus, I'm losing sleep over this one - what will I do two years from tonight?

Lose more sleep, and a bit more of my soul, and this gridiron doozie drools on.

*Click here to empty recycling bin*

This weekend, I strengthened my resolve to never let anything go to waste.

I was working at the Recycling Jackson drop-off site, a little cubby-hole of land where Jacksonites can drop off cans, bottles, newsprint, etc. to be recycled.

As a board member of Recycling Jackson, we're asked to volunteer a weekend or two a month to help out. No problem there - a little hard work never hurt anyone (but I learned that 16 and 17-year-olds hate volunteering their time, however - at least the ones I met).

Our organization is also starting an e-waste program, where folks can drop off old TVs, microwaves, and computers to be recycled or disposed of. Electronics tend to be stuffed with harmful gases and materials that can do some real damage to the environment, so the idea is we'll take care of it harm-free.

One lady pulls up in her van and drops off some computer equipment. I look in the back of her van and there glows, turquois-green, one of the original iMacs that Mr. Steve Jobs and company released unto the world in the late '90s.

"Does that thing still work?" I asked the lady.

"Yeah, our daughter used it, and we decided to upgrade," she said. "There's nothing wrong with it. It works fine."

Yoink.

I'm glad that there's a program to dispose of e-waste properly. I'm also glad that this lady didn't just chuck her Mac into the dumpster, smashing the screen and releasing who-knows-what into the atmosphere.

And I'm glad I got a free iMac. You betcha.

But then I thought, "Good Lord, is that what we've come to? A $1,000 piece of equipment is tossed in place of an updated version just a couple of years later?"

In other words, I have an issue with waste. Always have. I remember using the same waterbottle (an Aquafina 20 oz. model, I believe) through two years of my college career. When it got empty, I refilled it in the drinking fountain. It worked just fine.

I hate Styrafoam. I hate paper plates. And I really hate those new Swiffer dry mop thingies, where you use them and then toss the little static pad. What a waste.

Renner used to make fun of me for it. "We have a new czar of recycling," he used to tell me. "Don't you know some people say recycling uses more energy than it saves?"

This coming from the man who would make 200 copies of a three-page article for a 20-student class, and never went double-sided.

The idea that we can use something, throw it away after one use, and never look back disgusts me. But there is an opposite extreme. Take my gramma. She will use a hammer, lose it, and buy another one. Then she finds the old one. Now she's got a dozen hammers in her garage. She'll never run out as long as she's alive (unless she loses all of them - which is very possible).

So the system most of the world has in place - planned obsolescence, I believe it's called - just drives me crazy. I know that the iBook I just bought will be obsolete in a couple of years. And what can I do about it? Well, I can spend a butt-load to upgrade it, knowing that at some point all hardware reaches a ceiling. There's no durability. Not any more. All because companies want you to re-buy what they sell.

Take a lightbulb. There are lightbulbs out there that will last years and save you money over their lifetime. But most folks don't want to pay what they see as a higher price initially. It's madness! And some of the practices are downright sinister. Even Apple does it (here too)

Luckily there's a group of people out there who have found inventive ways to re-use electronics. Like making your iMac an aquarium.

So should my new seafoam beauty crash without the hope of recovery, I know I can make it into a great piece of urban art, like a Bauhausian kitty litter box. But it will not go to waste.

My car isn't the most stylish, or the fastest. But it sure gets me where I need to go. My clothes aren't that fashionable, and I often shop at Goodwill - and when I lose interest in an item, or it doesn't fit, I donate it back to Goodwill. It's a cycle.

There comes a time when a product's effectiveness and viability become absolutely terminal, and at that point I may replace it. But it better have lasted me a long time.

Give me something with a lifespan, damn it.

Or give me an iMac - and I'll put it to good use. I promise.

Mac daddy.

I made love to my new iBook on Tuesday night.

That was our first night together - a magical time, filled with lust and exploration.


...okay, so no love-making. But I'm thoroughly impressed.

I went ahead, last Thursday, and bought the iBook G4. I didn't get the PowerBook, like I had originally planned, because it was a bit too expensive and I didn't really need all that computing power.

Right now I'm surfing speedily along on the internet via a wireless connection at the Thunderbird Coffee House. It was so easy, and the connection is so fast. You can't get this kind of service at home. Plus the coffee is good.

What I ordered: iBook G4, wireless mouse, Microsoft Office.

The funny thing is all this stuff came seperately. I got the mouse first, then the Mac (it was like Christmas when I saw the box sitting on my coffee table), then the Office. But whatever, it came.

It's been a bit of an adjustment, with this OS X "Tiger" stuff. For instance - I miss the litte bar at the bottom of Windows that you can just click to bring the window up. On a Mac, they're all stacked on top of each other, or on the dock (the little menu at the bottom). And so many things I take for granted on a PC - alt+ctrl+delete say - I'm having to re-learn here.

But it's a beauty. My iBook has this cool thing called Dashboard. You click it, and up pops a bunch of mini programs. The time, a sticky-note pad, a system resources monitor - all right up front. Plus I downloaded such nifty "Widgets" as an English/German translator, a cocktail recipe program (just type in "Cosmopolitan" and it gives you in the ingredients), a window that notifies my when I receive my Gmail, and a little version of Pac-Man.

There's also the standards: iTunes, iDVD, the web browser Safari, and Garage Band, a program that lets you write and play your own music. I haven't experimented with that just yet.

The machine itself is gorgeous. Slick whites and greys with the little glowing apple on the back - plus the trackpad has scrolling capabilities when you use two fingers. And finally - finally! - I can burn my own damn CDs.

Yes, life is good. I've been playing with my iBook all week (including a super-late night on Tuesday; I was up until 1:30 a.m.) and am learning new things every day. Eventually I'll pick up some sort of "how-to" instructions, but for now I just want to play.

And the Mac lets me.

Know some tricks? Be sure and let me know, because there's so much I don't know.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who provided feedback. It really was a tough choice. But now I've got everything (the Office software, especially) to be productive and do what I want, and at about the same price as the PCs I was looking at.

Now if I can just find Illustrator or PhotoShop dirty cheap somewhere...

To Mac, or not to Mac

Think Different?

I'm thinking about it.

Ever since I graduated I've wanted to invest in some sort of computer. A laptop, I figured, would give me greater flexibility - especially with all the traveling I do. Plus, with all the local coffee shops having wi-fi, I don't need a pokey phone line to do what I need online.

But which way to go? A customized Dell/Gateway? A store-bought hunk of junk I can get for pretty cheap? eBay?

Then I read an article on the Mac Mini, a micro-Mac that only costs $500 (but comes with nothing else - just the CPU). After that, much like Newton, I had Apple on the brain.

I've heard over and over how Macs are the way to go for graphic designers. And artsy-fartsy folks. And hippies. I'm a graphic designer of sorts (I've been longing to do some freelance work, but don't really have the system or the resources to do it), so the Mac could help me. Right?

And darn it, Macs just look so cool. That glowing apple on the reverse side of the laptop screen. It's like it talks to me. "Dave," it whispers. "I glow. You glow. Let's glow together."

Wouldn't I like to be one of those hipsters, sipping on my double-shot coffee and not-right-clicking my way through the Web? Isn't this how capitalism and consumerism works: the need (emotional, spiritual, physical) to have that beautiful piece of plastic in my quaking hands?

Apple is doing well these days. Look at the iPod. Everyone's got one strapped to their arm as they jog around whatever hip city they live in. Who owns just a plain MP3 player? No one! This is the age of iPod.

It's tribal, man. There are the "in crowd," and then there are PC users. Some, however, have "switcher's remorse." That, I think, is what I'm apprehensive about. I know, in my heart and soul, PCs. I grew up tinkering with my dad's Packard Bell (remember those?), often wrecking the damn thing while I navigated through its folders, Windows 3.1, and alien-infested hallways (I was a big "Doom" player). Here at work, I'm kind of the tech-guy for my building. We have an IT department here at the credit union, but they're all the way across the street.

"Dave, how do you do this-and-this in Word/Excel/Outlook/etc.?"

I breathe PCs.

So why make the switch?

The value is in the journey (or something like that), as they say, and this little trek has put my brain to good use.

And I've already been approved by Apple's financing department. After a mere mouse click, I can own an iBook, PowerBook, Mac Mini, whatever. Just one little finger muscle twitch, and I'd be One of Them.

Think different? Join the revolution?