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My First Mac

My First New Mac

Kurt Cypher - February 2002

My first Mac experience was with some compact Macs in the university computer labs back in the fall of '88, where I typed up chemistry reports. I eventually ended up buying a DOS-compatible PC (whopping 8 MHz CPU, 1 MB of RAM, and Windows v1.0), simply because I could not afford a Mac.

Over the years, I owned several PCs, running various OS's, including Windows from 1.0 to 98, two flavors of Linux, and the Intel version of the Solaris Unix operating system. Rarely did I buy a brand-new machine, instead opting to upgrade until the case was maxed out.

Then, about three years ago, I got a job back at the university where I first used a Mac. We have a surplus store (actually a storage space used as a store) where old university equipment is sold. There I purchased my first Mac, an SE HDFD. I had fun playing around with it and started buying accessories to go with it - and then other Macs to cannibalize for parts.

I currently have a collection of low-end Macs that are gathering dust, probably soon to be donated to a local group that refurbishes old computers to give to people who can use them. Until yesterday, my highest-powered Mac was a Performa 6360 that was a little sluggish surfing the Web, but it wasn't too bad.

Until a couple of weeks ago, my main computer was a CTX laptop with an AMD 300 MHz CPU running Win98. The only times I ever had trouble with that machine were when I decided to repartition the hard drive and found that my backup was only partially good.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, it died completely. The best I could figure was that the motherboard or the CPU had gone. Instead of trying to find a new motherboard and/or CPU on eBay (CTX stopped dealing in laptops not long after I bought mine, so new parts are not easily acquired), I decided to get a new one. I had been looking at iBooks and TiBooks for a while. Yesterday, my first brand-new Mac showed up, after a shipping delay while they waited for parts.

I'm currently typing this on my so-new-you-can-still-smell-the-plastic-fumes 600 MHz iBook with combo drive. I'm iBook still getting used to OS X, but so far it's not too bad. Being a Unix professional, I love the fact that it's got Unix running under Aqua. I happen to be one of those strange people who believes that a person should get the computer that they want, not "go with the crowd."

My iBook can handle the type of games I like to play (mainly Civilization), as well as the word-processing and spreadsheet work I need to do, and the Unix underneath will allow me to better interact remotely with the Unix boxes I administer at work. For the few applications that I absolutely cannot get a Mac version of, I've ordered a copy of Virtual PC, so I should be all set.

Before I go, I would like to thank Low End Mac for helping me to figure out what I was doing with all those used Macs I've bought and showing me that there are a lot of other resources out there for older Macs. Not bad for a site that I literally found by chance two-and-a-half years ago.

Share the story of your first Mac experience by emailing with "My First Mac" as your subject.

Recent My First Mac articles

Thanks for the IBM PC, Dad, 01.09. Dad, thanks for bringing home that first IBM PC way back in 1981.
Overclocking a Mac mini Got Me Hooked on Souping Up Macs, 09.04. Stories of hot rodding iBooks, G3 iMacs, and PCI Power Macs on the cheap.
Mac LC III Still a Most Useful Machine, 07.30. A love affair that will last as long as they make Macs began with a used LC III in 1997, and it's still being used today.
Hooked on Macs, new and old, 07.15. Starting with an old Quadra in 2000, Royal left behind Windows and began acquiring his own stable of Macs.
More in the My First Mac index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: 15" MacBook Pro Core Duo, Jan. 2006 - The first Intel-based MacBook launched at 1.83-2.0 GHz, had several teething problems.
Group of the Day: System 6 is the email list for those who choose System 6.
November 21 in LEM history: 00: OS upgrades, downgrades - AltiVec vs. Pentium III - 01: Saved by the clones - Computer of the future - 02: Apple Education: Let's get to it - 03: Panther lets Macs and PCs work together, - Lombard SCSI bug - 05: 3 survivors from the 1970s - Real world battery life inadequate - Windows to Mac file transfer with Zip disks - $99 alternative to Microsoft Office - 06: Parallels 1.0 far more polished than beta
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