We believe in the long term value of Apple hardware. You should be able to use your Apple gear as long as it helps you remain productive and meets your needs, upgrading only as necessary. We want to help maximize the life of your Apple gear.
Oddly enough, this My First Mac isn't going to be about
my first Mac. It's going to be a friend's first Mac, the first
computer she ever owned.
I've used PCs for as long as I can remember; I remember hating
them until Windows 3.1 came along. My grade school had a few Apple
IIs, and I liked using them, but, frankly, Apples were just out of
our family budget, so I've grown up in the Wintel world. I don't
have any real horror stories to tell. (In fact, I even came to like
MS-DOS, after I finally had it explained to me in a logical,
methodical way.)
I know Wintel. I'm comfortable with it. I have Windows 98 on my
desktop and Windows 3.1 on my 486 laptop. If Wintel is the "Dark
Side," then I am a Dark Lord of the Sith.
But enough about that.
My friend has always been Mac fan, but she couldn't afford one.
We talked about computers one day, and she casually mentioned that
she really wanted a laptop. Mulling it over, I looked at my budget
and decided to see what I could find for her in the $250 range.
And, frankly, I have had a blast trying to find her a old but
still decent Mac laptop. Through sites such as MacAddict, Low End
Mac, and EveryMac, I was able to find a lot of valuble information
about upgradablity and compatibility. What's more, I've come to a
better understanding of what I can only term "the Mac philosopy."
(I'm even thinking of buying an old powerbook just for the
challenge of learning the Mac OS.)
In the end, I put a bid on and won a PowerBook 540 with a 240 meg hard drive and
12 megs of RAM. My friend can type her papers and surf the Net,
plus it's upgradeable. Since I got it well below what I expected to
pay for it, I took the extra cash I had set aside and bid on some
other goodies for her computer: a CD-ROM drive, Mac OS 7.6, and
Claris Works 4.
I would've been able to do none of that without the information
I got from EveryMac and Low End Mac.
Thanks guys, it's been educational. I now have a fuller
understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the Wintel and
Apple platforms.
