Welcome to The Starting Line

Welcome to The Starting Line. This is a new column dedicated to the experiences of the new Macintosh user (myself) and just about anything else I can conjure up that has to do with computers. My name is Dustin Roberts and on February 28, 1996, I became a new Mac user. My decision to purchase a Mac was a frustrating one, with many factors built into my decision. The main factor for my purchase, however, was the ease of use of the Mac operating system. Point and click, drag and drop, it doesn’t get any easier then this! Of course, I had some prior knowledge of computers on the PC side, as that was the computer I had to use daily at work. The majority of my work, however, was done in just one application, typing up work orders for telephone installation crews. If something got messed up, or if I returned to my PC after someone else was using it only to find the dreaded “C:” prompt, I would have to get my supervisor to help me.

Another main factor in my decision to purchase a Mac was that my wife has no experience whatsoever on computers, and I wanted an operating system that would be easy for her to use as well. As a matter of fact, while I was looking at PC’s, she was playing Solitaire on a Mac! If I didn’t have to go physically pull her away from the solitaire game, I probably wouldn’t even have looked at the Mac!

Now, we hit just about every big time warehouse computer store you could think of before realizing we were going to have to finance our big computer purchase. Our only problem was that everywhere we went, we could only get approved for about $1200. What were we supposed to do? Buy the cpu at one store and the monitor at another? The last place we looked and ended up making a purchase at was Sears. That day we had just been walking around the mall looking for dress shoes when we came across the computer department. They only had two or three models of Macs and a couple of PC’s. My wife immediately starts to play solitaire on the Mac, while I’m getting the specks about the low end Mac model. Next thing I know my wife is set on buying the model she is playing solitaire on. It was a performa 6300cd with a 1.2 gig hard drive, 28.8bps modem, 16 meg of ram and tons of other goodies. I was so excited that she wanted this one because so did I, and we usually don’t agree on things like this. All right, let’s get it! We have an account with Sears so it should be no problem. Just one little phone call to boost the limit and presto!! I am now a new Mac owner.

Taking it home and unpacking the Mac was probably the best part. That new Mac, fresh from the box smell, has to be one of the best smells known to man. The next best part is finding a place to put it. This was my hardest decision. Believe me, not everyone has money for a nice desk. My Mac and printer are sitting atop two huge 3ft pioneer speakers that I no longer use, with my keyboard and mouse on an end table beside them. Now, how about putting all the pieces together and then trying to figure out how to turn it on. Let’s see, it’s pretty easy I say, everything is labeled. This whole process from beginning to end has been relatively painless and non frustrating.

Since I first powered up, I have fallen in love with my Mac. It has become my new passion. I want to know all there is to know about Macintosh and the Apple family. I have a subscription to Mac User plus a couple of E-zines from the web such as this one. It’s good to try to read as many articles or magazines as you can so you can learn as much as possible. Another great place to find reference material about Mac’s is at your local library. These books are in decent, if not new condition and are yours to look at for free for at least three weeks. If you find a good book, maybe you will decide to purchase it for future reference, because the library probably won’t have the book when you absolutely need it. You’ve just made a major purchase and wouldn’t you like to know as much as you can about it so you can use it to its full potential?

Now, that’s about it for this issue. Remember that I’m the new guy in this big game of computer’s and if I’m wrong about something, please correct me. Hopefully the editor will sign me on as a possible freelance or regular column writer for My Mac. (I did-Tim!)

Next month, I will be writing about some dreadfully scary experiences I have gotten into and out of with my Mac. Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next month!!