During a weekend visit, a longtime friend mentioned his desire to
move to a Macintosh. He is far from a power user, needing only a
machine which can handle email, browsing, and word processing.
To give you an idea as to his needs, his current machine is an older
Toshiba Tecra running at 100 MHz with 16 MB of RAM and a 750 MB hard
drive. The machine runs Windows 95 and has been fairly stable for him
over the last five years.
We moved to my upstairs study and began to rummage through some of
the machines I maintain in the event a time disturbance shunts me back
to 1997. I quickly moved toward two pieces I have been looking to
remove from service for a few months.
On my desk was a Power Mac
7600/132 packed with 64 MB of RAM and a 4 GB hard drive. This
machine was used simply to fill the slot in my computer desk, as the
desktop case was the perfect fit. I grabbed an 8.6 updater and got the
machine back to a base configuration. We then proceeded to load a few
of my favorite applications to let him get a feel for the machine.
Word processing: I installed ClarisWorks 4 as his office
suite, adding Word 5.1 for the times he needs to deal with .doc files.
I also installed a copy of Nissus Writer and BBEdit (both light
versions) for him to try.
Web browsing: I made sure he had access to Netscape 4.x and
iCab. To be on the safe side, I installed
Anarchie for his FTP needs (although he has no idea what FTP means) and
FaxSTF for his faxing.
Email: I added Eudora (his PC choice) and Claris Emailer to
give him a few options. The benefit of Eudora should be the ability to
migrate his current mail to the new machine. He can also make use of
Netscape for mail and news.
Entertainment: I really impressed him when I added GrayAMP to allow him
to play MP3s. He had not been able to run an MP3 player on his Pentium
box and is excited about the capability. I also gave him my well worn
copies of Civilization II and Heroes of Might and Magic. Great strategy
games like these are timeless and still enjoyable on older
hardware.
Accessories: His current PC rig does have a Zip drive, so I
added an old Mac Zip drive to help him move his files. I no longer have
a printer that will support this machine and told him to grab an older
HP or Apple machine on
eBay to complete that piece of the puzzle. I was happy to include a
17" Apple Monitor that was simply taking up space in my office.
We spent the better part of an hour making sure the machine was set
for his dial up accounts, that all of the applications worked, and that
the peripherals were in place. I was struck by just how quick the
machine felt as we went through all of the applications. He commented
that the machine felt faster than his Tecra (it should) and that he
really felt like he was getting a new machine.
I grabbed a copy of an OS 8 book to make sure he had a source
of answers about the OS. He was extremely excited to make the move, and
I was happy to move someone to a Mac. I was very happy to clean up my
room a bit (down to three computers and one monitor).
The only twang of remorse I felt came as he eyed one of the Newton
2100s I recently purchased on eBay. The Newton had long been my
favorite PDA, providing incredible functionality in a small package.
Unfortunately, time had forced me to move on two years ago, and I had
regretted the move every day since. Last week, I had found extremely
low prices on a few machines and grabbed two for my collection. As the
machine was not to be my main PDA, I decided to let him take one on the
condition that I could pull it back in an emergency. We then spent
another hour getting the connection utilities installed and setting up
the Newton with the large amounts of software I had stashed away.
At the end of the night, he left an extremely happy Mac user. Only
with a Macintosh could you give a good friend a six-year-old system and
peripherals and have him thank you.
When running applications from that time period, the system runs as
fast as any new computer. The total cost of buying a similar rig would
be under $300 (including the Newton and peripherals) and would give
typical users all of the computing power they would need.
In contrast, I had a five year old Pentium 166 I was looking to
unload to free up some closet space. I could find no one in my circle
to take the machine off my hands for free. I was eventually able to
find a buddy who needed a DOS machine to play some older DOS games.
This was a machine which debuted at the same time as the 7600, but it
is virtually useless five years later.
When you tell your friends about the benefits of the Macintosh
platform, don't forget to point out the total cost of ownership as a
major plus for the platform. 
