Lee Hogan Have you seen the economics for the new Macintosh—the one with the two men standing in huge cardboard bins? The younger, more active guy, glaringly a Mac, jumps out of his carton, ready to get to work. The PC person, looking a bit chagrined, stays in his box. He can’t start until he gets some extra software program and a different system. So sad.
“And now it’s not authentic,” my daughter tells me. She bought a Dell, which arrived with all the software programs she ordered and was properly geared out of the field. No ready, no additional device, no problem. She became used to it 10 minutes after it arrived.
I, however, became now not. I took my gorgeous new iMac out of the box and plugged it in; however, I had no idea what to do next. The computer did include plenty of software (iTunes, iCal, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, iChat, Garage Band, whatever that is, and something that made little widgets fly all over my display screen). However, I failed to do that. I wanted to open my vintage documents, which I could not do because the laptop didn’t have the applications I had used and would not use my packages. I thought I would get a new software program, which costs more than the hardware.
I can be a dyed-in-the-wool Mac man or woman, but I’m also technologically impaired. I am referred to as my Mac guru right now. Seven-and-a-half hours and $300 later, he had transferred all of my documents to the new iMac, connected me to my e-mail provider, imported my bookmarks and cope with the book, set up a king’s ransom in software, and given me a fast tour of OS X. “You need to take a direction in this operating system,” he cautioned.
OK, that becomes highly-priced but well worth it, I notion. True, it became a little more complicated than the economy I became about what counted, proper? Well, no, not right. It could have counted if I had been purposeful. However, I wasn’t. Since my zip and jazz disks wouldn’t work with the iMac, I now wished for an external hard drive to lower back up my files. So, I ordered one online, was given a lemon, returned it, got some other lemon, returned it, and ultimately sold one for twice as much cash on the Apple Keep. That took three weeks.
Well, at least I had Windows, or so stated every other Mac industrial. My new iMac is also a PC with an Intel chip. Pretty high-quality, huh? That’s what I thought. But I was wrong. The iMac did not come with Windows. I might have to buy it if I wanted it, in addition to a program allowing me to interchange between OS X and Windows. More money, greater trouble. I decided to forgo Windows.
The proper news was that I was going to get a $179 rebate on my iPod, which, quite genuinely, I would by no means have ordered; however, it had come with the computer. By this time, I must have predicted the procedure to be more complex than advertised. I needed statistics from the UPC label on the authentic carton to get my rebate. Unfortunately, I had thrown out the carton because I had no region to store it.
The Apple representative reluctantly agreed to fax me a form, but considering that neither my fax device nor my fax software program worked with the new iMac, I had to have it despatched to Kinko’s. There is lots more to this tale; however, the fact is that after three months, four phone calls, and numerous portions of mail, I nonetheless have not received the rebate.
What mattered maximum turned into that I turned into able to paintings, at remaining — if I failed to matter printing. The new pc did not seem to like my laser printer, which it insisted on calling Flash Paper instead of LaserJet 2100 M. Flash Paper had something to do with Macromedia’s DreamWeaver. Nothing made it leave, which includes dumping all Macromedia applications in the trash.
I called Apple support. The tech became baffled and cautioned me to delete the printer. Then, he despatched me to Macromedia, who became further baffled and referred me to HP. HP concluded that the computer was now not recognizing my printer, and since mine was about to die of old age, I ought to immediately upgrade to a brand new printer for the most effective $330.
Setting up the printer was supposed to be so simple a child ought to do it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. The PC kept calling it Flash Paper. I called HP. It appeared I did not have the proper printer drivers. Still, via the magic of an HP Macintosh professional, the iMac diagnosed the printer sooner or later, modified its name to HP LaserJet 1320, and got rid of Flash Paper.
All that remained was to parent my new software. My web guru (not to be confused with my Mac guru) came over to Tinker with DreamWeaver, which no longer permitted me to upload files to my website. After hours of troubleshooting, she gave up in despair. I was known as Macromedia once more.
Adobe has bought Macromedia, so it became difficult to talk to a real person. But, by the 0.33 try, I reached a very determined DreamWeaver assist person in India. Sooner or later, she found a space before the hard pressure call (do not ask me how it got there). Take out the gap, rename the hard power, reenter all of the information, do that, and, poof, I should upload documents.