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My First Mac

Windows User Hooked by PowerBook

Christopher Alan Gohm - May 2002

I have been a Wintel user ever since I started using computers.

I good hooked on Macs when my homeroom teacher gave me a PowerBook 165 that had been given to somebody else to replace my really, really, really old Wintel laptop. It came with WordPerfect 3.5 for Macintosh and a few other applications - and System 7.5.1 (which I upgraded to System 7.5.3 later on). I got my hands of a copy of Microsoft Word 5.1a for Macintosh, too. I love this computer, because I had the ability to share files between my Wintel desktop and the Macintosh laptop.

But the real problem was printing. To print I had to copy the document to a floppy disk and take it over to one of the PCs that had a printer and then load the document in Microsoft Word for Windows and finally print the document from there. After several months of watching me printing and working with my documents this way, my homeroom teacher brought in the desktop Macintosh that he had been using for many years in his previous jobs.

I was really grateful for this, because now I could print more directly (meaning no conversion of the documents were needed) and not have to get out my laptop just to get my work done. But the weird thing is that I am planning on getting a brand new laptop.

The only thing is that this new unit has to be a Wintel machine for compatibility reasons, and going back to the Microsoft Windows is not going to be as pleasant as converting to the Macintosh was. PowerBook 165 I am going to miss having direct access to some of the great applications that are on the Macintosh, such as MacDraw Pro and WordPerfect, but since I am keeping the PowerBook 165, this should not be a problem. But I am happy with what I am doing, and getting this laptop when I really needed it was a lifesaver.

I have some advice for new computer users out there (I mean people who have never touched a computer before in their lives). If you are just looking for a good and reliable computer for word processing and graphics, a Macintosh computer might be the computer you are looking for. And if you end up getting a new Macintosh computer, make sure that you buy a USB (Universal Serial Bus) floppy disk drive for compatibility with older computers that offer or only have floppy disk drives.

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Recent My First Mac articles

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Hooked on Macs, new and old, 07.15. Starting with an old Quadra in 2000, Royal left behind Windows and began acquiring his own stable of Macs.
More in the My First Mac index.

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