My First New Mac

My first Mac experience was with some compact Macs in the university computer labs back in the fall of '88, where I typed up chemistry reports. I eventually ended up buying a DOS-compatible PC (whopping 8 MHz CPU, 1 MB of RAM, and Windows v1.0), simply because I could not afford a Mac.

Over the years, I owned several PCs, running various OS's, including Windows from 1.0 to 98, two flavors of Linux, and the Intel version of the Solaris Unix operating system. Rarely did I buy a brand-new machine, instead opting to upgrade until the case was maxed out.

Then, about three years ago, I got a job back at the university where I first used a Mac. We have a surplus store (actually a storage space used as a store) where old university equipment is sold. There I purchased my first Mac, an SE HDFD. I had fun playing around with it and started buying accessories to go with it - and then other Macs to cannibalize for parts.

I currently have a collection of low-end Macs that are gathering dust, probably soon to be donated to a local group that refurbishes old computers to give to people who can use them. Until yesterday, my highest-powered Mac was a Performa 6360 that was a little sluggish surfing the Web, but it wasn't too bad.

Until a couple of weeks ago, my main computer was a CTX laptop with an AMD 300 MHz CPU running Win98. The only times I ever had trouble with that machine were when I decided to repartition the hard drive and found that my backup was only partially good.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, it died completely. The best I could figure was that the motherboard or the CPU had gone. Instead of trying to find a new motherboard and/or CPU on eBay (CTX stopped dealing in laptops not long after I bought mine, so new parts are not easily acquired), I decided to get a new one. I had been looking at iBooks and TiBooks for a while. Yesterday, my first brand-new Mac showed up, after a shipping delay while they waited for parts.

I'm currently typing this on my so-new-you-can-still-smell-the-plastic-fumes 600 MHz iBook with combo drive. I'm still getting used to OS X, but so far it's not too bad. Being a Unix professional, I love the fact that it's got Unix running under Aqua. I happen to be one of those strange people who believes that a person should get the computer that they want, not "go with the crowd."

My iBook can handle the type of games I like to play (mainly Civilization), as well as the word-processing and spreadsheet work I need to do, and the Unix underneath will allow me to better interact remotely with the Unix boxes I administer at work. For the few applications that I absolutely cannot get a Mac version of, I've ordered a copy of Virtual PC, so I should be all set.

Before I go, I would like to thank Low End Mac for helping me to figure out what I was doing with all those used Macs I've bought and showing me that there are a lot of other resources out there for older Macs. Not bad for a site that I literally found by chance two-and-a-half years ago.