Another TAB member

[studyolic]

Hello everyone, my first post on TAB. I used to follow MacFixit and then the breakaway group ("Rangoon" or something) after some politics got in the way of Mac discussions, then I gave up. So it was really nice to stumble across TAB !

I'm a low-end user, (PB 12" G4), my wife has an iBook G4 12", my son a MBP 15", and we have an old iMac Indigo from about 2001 in the spare room. I pretty much rely on Safari, Mail and Appleworks for 90% of my time on the Mac. I use iPhoto a little, and iTunes a little. But I love the way Macs work and look. The PCs I have at work are just so clunky, old fashioned-looking and slow to work with!

Seems to be a nice international community here. I'm in Scotland at the moment, have lived in Spain, Australia and Germany before that, and my son is at Melbourne uni just now.

Looking forward to some interesting posts!

[Yuiichi]

Welcome to the TAB forums, studyolic! Hope you enjoy your stay!

How long have you been a Mac user? I'm assuming quite a long time as you still have an old iMac Indigo!

[studyolic]

Thanks for the welcome. I bought my first Mac (actually, my first ever computer!) in 1991, I think it was a PowerBook 145. OS7.5, black and white screen, and I used ClarisWorks and some fax software.
I remember experiencing a severe bout of "buyer's remorse" when the PowerBook arrived. I think it cost about 4000 Deutschmark (I was in Germany at the time), about $2000? Would that be right? Anyway, I just looked at the box, the price hanging over my head, thinking "I know ZERO about computers. This is going to be a huge waste of money". Then I pressed the ON button, heard a euphonious, pleasing chime, and after a minute a message appeared - "Welcome to Macintosh". It just felt friendly, human, not at all what I was fearing. Then there was a walk-through tutorial about menus, trackball, etc. Within an hour I was using ClarisWorks, writing letters and creating a database and a spreadsheet. I felt like Einstein! And I just fell in love with the Mac interface. I had been resistant to getting a computer, thinking they were just for games and simple housekeeping stuff, but I had a one-year old son, and I had a strong feeling that computers would play a strong part in his future. If I didn't want to get left behind, I would have to take the plunge. I was influenced to go with the Mac by research that was showing that Mac users learned how to use a computer more quickly, and thereafter were more productive, than PC users. I just wanted computing made simple!

Gee, only my second post and it's way too long already.

[baseballboy828]

Welcome to TAB! Thanks for sharing your story about your first mac. It's always fun to hear how people felt who bought macs many years ago, before iLife, OS X, and all the other shiny things that make people switch today.

[notabadname]

Cool! 1991 Is when I first started using Mac. I still have to mess with PC's for work, but that is good because it still reinforces how much better a platform the Mac still is. Welcome to TAB! Some great info and discussions to be found here, enjoy!

[Yuiichi]

Great story studyolic! Being a very recent switcher myself (August of 2006), I can vividly remember that friendly chime that you experienced all the way back in 1991. Good memories all around