My First Mac

No PC Could Equal It

Henk Goewie - 2002.01.10

My first Mac is sitting behind me, in a closet.

My first graphic computer experience back in 1986, believe it or not, was with a Quantel, that was sitting in its own room with separate work and toolbox screens. It had one of the first colour printers (the ones with transfer films), and no-one had any real use for it, really.

I was freelancing for one of the biggest apparel manufacturers worldwide, and apparently they had some big profits to burn at that time. Hell, with someone like me around....

From then on, I was hooked. Everything at that time was printed and had some or other graphic effect to it, so I was joyriding my friend's Macs until sometime 1990. "Macs are dead," everybody was screaming, "Windows is there." So, I got a big PC with scanner, colour printer, 17 inch screen, and CorelDraw.

It was a dog. The time we lost just keeping the thing from crashing.... Back to joy riding my friend's Mac.

In 1993 the news was spreading about PowerPC, and this time we decided to get our first self-owned Mac.

I had to have the 6100, the first promising PowerPC, and I remember, as if today - ripping its box open. System 7.1 wasn't so good, but from 7.6 on it was nearly perfect. The amount of work made on it - CDs and CDs full of graphics, logos layouts and god knows what. Hell, the money we made with this baby - sheer incredible!

At OS 8, we added an 8500; it is also working daily (now with a G3 card).

The 6100 now has a G3 upgrade, still only 72 MB RAM, but works fine. It sits in a closet behind me, connected to a burner, an old (but good) StyleWriter, a modem, and and a big hard drive. It's on day and night, connected to our network of iMac DV, G4, 8500, and printers. We and our customers can dial it up to see what's on its drives. It receives faxes that we can check remotely.

I have a feeling that our "little server first Mac" will run for some time yet. Over almost eight years, this 6100 has cost us less then $1,800 including upgrades.

No PC could equal its quality and ease of use. Apple manufactures incredible hardware that has the life span of a quality TV or stereo, whereas the average PC equals an average toy.

Let's not even begin about the superior software and ergonomics.