Trying to Learn The Mac World

While we were up at Sonoma State last weekend, one of my goals was to find out what my daughter would need in the way of computing power. We knew she'd need a laptop of her own, and I wanted to make sure whatever we got would get the job done.

During the lunch break we met the school's Apple rep who explained a very attractive program that Apple has for students. You can buy one of several MacBooks with a $100 discount, and along with that you get an $200 iPod Nano and a $100 printer. The MacBooks will not only run Apple software, but also Windows stuff, and since I've been exclusively a Windows user since computers were big as box cars, the MacBook option looked pretty good.

Last night we headed over the Apple store (and were probably the only one's there who didn't want an iPhone) and bought the student package. We got the mid-level MacBook machine, a wireless mouse, upgraded the Nano to the 8 gig version since my daughter's 4 gig Mini is full, and picked up the free printer/scanner. All in, about $2,000 of which $300 will be rebated and a graduation present from Holycoast Mom and Dad will take care of most of the rest. Thanks Mom and Dad!

The next trick was trying to figure out how to use the thing. I have absolutely no experience on an Apple platform, so the entire evening was a learning experience. What happened to the right click button? Where's Explorer and how do you get to the internet? How do I get the wireless to talk to my DSL? How do we get over 1,000 songs from the other computer loaded up and into the iTunes library? How can we get AOL on this machine?

Thankfully, despite some trials and tribulations along the way, we managed to get all of that stuff figured out by midnight. I still need to load Windows Office so she can use Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, and there's still a few items like her camera software and other odds and ends to figure out, but we're making progress. I have to say that so far I'm pretty impressed with the machine. It's much lighter than my Dell laptop and has a bigger display. My 51 year old eyes are not excited about the small internet display, but I'm sure that can be fixed. She doesn't have as much trouble with it.

When I'm ready for another machine, I may have to give Apple a look.