A 'Switcher's Tale'

[Chipell]

Day 1:
Holy Cow! The iMac came today. Before I plugged it in I put in the new 4 meg of ram I got from Crucial (thank you BBB). And now, with great anticipation, I plug it in.

It starts up immediately. No protracted bar running across my screen, no white lines of unintelligible text on a black screen, just a brief white screen with the Apple logo, and there it is.

Where is control panel? Hmmmm, where is explorer? What's with the dock? Ahhhhhhh, Switch 101 is comforting.

I play until 3 am. I'm starting to get a handle on this 'thing' called an iMac. It is gorgeous, it is responsive, it sounds great, it looks great, it's quiet. It's intuitive! Good night.
_________________________________________

Day 2:
A lot of boxes came today. My tv tuner from Elgato; iWork, my Logitech S530 wireless keyboard and mouse; my Apple networking stuff; Monopoly; Vmware Fusion.

I spend the morning putting my software on, and then spend about ten minutes setting up the network. What a piece of cake, wooo hooo!

I get Vmware fusion on and I install Vista. Takes about 15 minutes. Microsoft Money up and running.

I imported all of my saved email messages from Outlook. I take that horrid space picture off of my desktop and go with a pastel green. Nice. Ahhhh, better on the eyes.

Playing all day, don't stop for lunch, almost dinner time, haven't stopped yet. Only time away from this beauty is to go to the bathroom or let the dogs out.

Downloaded Firefox. Simple.
Downloaded Limewire. Simple.
Downloaded Candybar. Simple.
Downloaded a ton of icons. Simple.
Copied over all of my documents/pictures/music from my pc. Simple and FAST! Holy smoking cow!

Need to sell that tiny little wireless keyboard and mouse. To small for these fat fingers.

Went optical out (headset jack) to my Logitech Z-5500 speakers. WOW.

I am sooooo tired and hungry. And now it is suppertime.

More later, but first: I am SOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY!!!!

[houltmac]

On a day of really bad stuff happening, you made me smile. Thanks man, and congrats on your new iMac. I am never surprised by the reactions, but they are always great to hear. Here is to many more wonderful discoveries on your new Mac.

[baseballboy828]

Glad to hear you are enjoying your iMac. Please let us know if you have any questions.

[Chipell]

Wow.
That's all I can really say.

I have the Elgato TV tuner all set up. Slick as snot.
Downloaded PS Elements and installed.
Put some addons that BBB found for me!

And that brings me to my final thought for the day: not only is the iMac an incredible piece of engineering: beautiful, quiet, satisfying,

BUT

The Mac community is every bit as incredible. Thank you all for your help, given and anticipated.

Good night. Talk to you tomorrow1

[Yuiichi]

Hehe, glad to hear that you're enjoying your iMac so much! It only gets better as you get more familiar with Mac OS X and see subtle differences in the way it works compared to Windows. Every so often, you'll have an "AH-HA! That's why I switched" moment, and you'll be so pleased you did every time!

As BBB said, if you have any more questions, feel free to ask!

[notabadname]

I enjoyed reading that, as much as watching my kids take in some new experience. Always fun to re-experience things through other peoples eyes. Makes it new again for me. Brings back the thrill of the shipping box arriving with my Dual 2.0 G5, and how little sleep I got playing with it initially. Actually, I still miss a lot of sleep playing with this thing.

Thanks for sharing Chipell.

[lucamacis]

Thanks for that post! Im glad your having so much fun with your iMac.

It reminds me of the time I got my first Powermac and then Intel Mac Mini. Good, fun, with a hint of sleep deprivation times

[Ginamos]

Great post Chip, excellent read, good to hear you're enjoying your new purchase.

I notice you've bought the Logitech S530, which I also have. Logitech hardware is very good, but their software has a reputation for being fairly crap on the Mac, so if you have any problems Steermouse is a good alternative.

[Chipell]

Day 3

This Mac stuff rattles the brain and tickles the soul. Somehow it seems that crossing over from the PC/MS world, everything was backwards. I think I'm having a "Through the Looking Glass" experience!

I have been spending a lot of time reading and studying. Here are my initial, not quite yet tainted thoughts:

I love Safari. It's fast, it's cool, but sometimes it's confusing. It opens a new web page over your current web page so you think the first webpage is gone. Hmmm, probably in settings somewhere.

I love Mail. I don't like the sounds, so I turned them off.

Downloaded Stuffit. Nice program.

Downloaded Chipmunk. A little slow.

Hooked up a 500gb usb drive as my Time Machine backup drive. Smooth as a baby's butt.

Downloaded the Aperture Trial. THIS PROGRAM ROCKS!!!!

Went back to the wireless mighty mouse, but still using the Logitech keyboard.

The picture quality on this machine is really good. Really, really good.

Have been using Vmware Fusion, and it is a fantastic program. Uses little resources but does what it needs to do. I recommend it.

Having lots of trouble trying to update Adobe Acrobat 7. The updates get to about 95% and go no further. No info on the web either.

Downloaded Firefox and tried it out again. It seems kind of bloated compared to Safari, but it was comforting, like an old pair of shoes, so I'll keep it around when I need a blanky to calm me down a bit.

Downloaded Candybar 3. Get's hung up on changing my icons! What? That's why I bought it. Will have to check it out a little better.

I notice that when I am doing an intensive HD activity, like backing up, my system really bogs down.

Elgato EyeTV is really nice. Addicting too. Yikes!

I have to be honest: I am hooked, all the way. I wouldn't go back now if you gave me a quad-core demon gaming pc running VistaSP1. Nope, nope, nope.

Why did I wait so long?

[lucamacis]

Lol. Nice update

It would of been awesome if you done this all as a blog. " A Swithers Tale". With regular updates on your pros and cons of os x.

You would of got loadsa hits