I did it.

 

I brought one home with me, because I live near not one but TWO Apple stores and clearly it was meant to be.

I like it a lot already, it's different but not hard to figure out (once you get used to not looking for the X in the Upper Right Hand Corner to close the window), and the one-up-from-the-bottom-of-the-line model was sufficient for my purposes. I have never bought the Mac Mantra that it's totally intuitive, it's not, but it's also not difficult and if you have half a brain you can translate from PC to Mac. The salesman was great, very low key and totally uninterested in selling me more than I needed, they are not on commission. He also didn't condescend at all to this woman who was just about old enough to be his mother, so he gets high points for that.

I did laugh out loud when I unpacked it. If you've ever purchased a new PC, you know it comes with a paperback-sized book or two and a wad of software that would choke a horse. A Mac box contains a Mac and a pamphlet slightly larger than a greeting card that points out the names of the parts, and a copy of the operating system in case the Unthinkable Happens. Though if the Unthinkable Happens there is the Genius Bar in the store.

I spent a great deal of 2006 in unsuccessful counseling sessions online and on the phone, with Microsoft and other vendors, trying to get all of my software to work. We downloaded patches and said magic words, and it is still busted. Basic functions work, or I would not be here, but major functions are not speaking to each other, and God and Microsoft couldn't make it work without spending more than this 5 year old box is worth.

It will take a few days of backing up crap off this machine before I can use the mind-zapper thingie from Men in Black and wipe its memory, move it off this desk and put the new baby here, when I'm not cuddling it like a new puppy wherever I am. God, it's so cute it's disgusting. I like the feel of the keyboard - the Dell laptop's downsized keyboard annoys me, but the Mac keyboard isn't an issue.

After dinner I'll start the gruesome task of pulling anything worth saving off Old Nellie here. Mostly photos, a few documents. Really not that much, but I'm bored just thinking about it.

We are not going totally Mac overnight here we still have the Dell laptop Girl uses, so we will have a combined network. Eventually Girl will get a Mac, but for now, this one is mine and nobody is touching it because it is my personal new shiny pretty baby and hands off, Girlchild!

Girlchild needs to borrow the front-end loader and clean out her room, and back up crap off her old college PC and donate it somewhere before a new Mac comes home, because we are already up to our butts in computers. Two people, four computers (two are geriatric), soon to be five if my mother gives me her Dell desktop that is only a couple of years old. At least TWO machines have to leave before another one comes home to stay, because this is crazy.