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Mac Shopping at CompUSA

- 2000.01.18

My week started out with me deciding to upgrade to Mac OS 8.5. I hadn't heard of too many problems with 8.5 running on a S900. The only question that remained was where to find it, because it is out of print.

I searched high and low. Before I knew it, Thursday had rolled around, and I still didn't have my Mac OS 8.5. Most of the places that claimed to have it were out of stock, and the ones that did have it wanted too much money for an out of print operating system.

So I said to myself, "Why don't I just get Mac OS 9?"

That line of thought led me down a long winding road through the hell we call search engines, trying to find if anyone had successfully installed OS 9 on a SuperMac S900. After four long hours I turned up nothing, and just when I was about to give up, I found one of those anonymous message boards containing a message saying that someone had installed OS 9 on a SuperMac C500 with success.

Even though these were two completely different model clones, I figured I had a shot and that was enough to enable me to purchase OS 9. I immediately browsed over to compusa.com, and they had it in stock at my local CompUSA store.

Shopping at CompUSA for Macintosh software was quite troubling at first. I walked around for 20 minutes screaming, "Where the hell is the Mac software!?" Then I realized something. I was a Macintosh consumer. All the shoppers were looking at me funny, and I know they were saying in their minds, "Damn Mac users, always have to announce that they don't use PC's".

I finally found the Macintosh area of CompUSA, a small closet sized area all the way in back of the store. When I entered the closet (a.k.a. the Apple section), I knew I felt something strange, like I had crossed over some invisible border. It felt like I was speeding on the highway with a cop behind me and I had just crossed over the state line and the cop had no choice but to back off. All of a sudden all the computer "professionals" who looked like they wanted to sucker me into buying the latest piece of garbage Compaq computer scattered in every which direction.

In a way, it's kind of cool. All I have to do is go into the Macintosh section of a CompUSA and all the loser salesmen will leave me alone. I wish I had known this a few years ago; I could have saved myself many anxiety attacks.

Locating Mac OS 9 on one of the shelves, I quickly grabbed it and was about to make my way out when I spotted a modem cable I needed. "Wow, they got Macintosh cables too!" I said to myself. (Remember this is my first time as an Apple consumer)

After getting over my initial shock, I proceeded to leave the Macintosh section (a.k.a. my new sanctuary), and all the salesmen began to shift their bloodthirsty eyes at me. Then they looked down, and once they saw Mac OS 9 in my hands they ran like vampires that had just seen a crucifix.

A short time later I got home installed my modem cable and began to back up my hard drive. Once that was done, I put the OS 9 CD in my CD-ROM drive, started the installer, and 20 minutes later I was done.

But that's a story for another time, besides I have to get back to CompUSA with my soapbox to start my "Get A Mac!" rally.

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