My first experience with a computer was back in 1985, or thereabouts, when the accounting office I worked in got a Compaq with DOS. I loved working on that thing. Of course I did. I was 29!
By 1993, out of accounting and into academia, working on my Ph.D. in English, I got assigned, by request, to a computer lab classroom. The lab had Macs.
Did I have real Mac experience? Nooooooo. I had seen one early model in the lab of a wastewater treatment plant I had worked in back in the early '80s, had even fiddled around with some basic programming language on it. That was it. Other than that, I had only had whatever computer experience I had gleaned from that old work PC, plus having to type long English literature papers on a typewriter/homeprocessor I had at home.
Nevertheless, I wanted that Mac computer lab classroom. I wanted to learn how to use them, so I figured the best way to do it was to be required to use them.
By the end of the first class session, I was up and running on the Mac. I was hooked and bought my first Mac a few weeks later, and I think by the time I left teaching in 2003, I was on my 4th one, a G4. That particular computer started gathering dust as I had to start using a PC for some test scoring from home. By the time I got shed of that assignment, my G4 was no longer useful for me. I ended up getting a desktop PC and over the past 3 years have become more and more annoyed by the increasing incidents of "BSD," aka Blue Screen of Death. The final straw came when the dang PC got the BSD when trying to open my iTunes software. That did it. I can't update my iPod, can't listen to my music. Pooh.
Macs were back in my sites, and I longed for the day I could justify the expense to get back to Mac.
Well, I never did justify the expense, really, but yesterday I finally bought my 13" MacBook Pro, along with a very girly white iPhone 4, first day out, with a hot pink bumper. Absolutely NOT practical but absolutely worthwhile to me.
This is the inaugural blog from my new laptop. :-)
It's a bit different, I must admit. This laptop talks more than I do. And what the heck is VO? My dad used to drink it, and now it's on my computer. Once I learn how it works, I reckon I will learn how to turn it off.
Or maybe we'll have some scintillating conversations.
OK, maybe it will take me longer to learn how to use this. I have time. And it will take me some time to get around that iPhone. I still can't get Facebook off the start page. I mean, c'mon. I am not on Facebook that much, Royal Wedding status updates notwithstanding.
So why did I finally give myself permission to buy this new technology? Because it's yet another chance for me to learn. This will be my laptop and phone for my new business, and I will have to learn to use it, because once I get everything migrated to the laptop, the desktop is going to live with Pop.
More anon . . . .
I switched to a Mac the day I retired. I thought it would be a good thing to keep me busy, learning something new. One thing you might consider is buying a membership to Apple's One-to-One service. For something like $100 you can get a 1 hour personal session every week for one year. They teach you specific things you might never explore yourself, and also can help you with things you're having trouble figuring out yourself. Plus it's another fun thing for a retiree to do!
ReplyDeleteI did purchase that one-to-one, for $99. I can't wait to get all the stuff off my old PC and onto the Mac. That's on the list for next week, after I get some junk cleared off the PC.
ReplyDelete