Mac Mini - 1st install

[libertango]

Mac Mini - 1st install
Originally uploaded by halobrien

To davidlevine and kateyule: I am a new immigrant to your country, and barely speak the language.

To everyone else: Well, I've been living off of $150 3rd-hand Dells from UW surplus for a while now. So after a hard squint at the fisc, we thought getting me a machine a bit more modern would be a useful piece of capital expense. (Let alone, it means we can hope I won't hog so much time on akirlu's quad-core Dell, my present to her last year.)

And, just because the price point is not bad, and it's the one major OS I haven't spent all that much time with personally... I decided to take a deep breath and get a Mac Mini.

Those of you who've known me for years are laughing quite hard now. You're welcome. :)

Mind you, I don't really expect to have fewer problems than other platforms from this move -- I just expect to have different ones. Perhaps that's a low bar to set, but we'll see.

Comments

One of us! One of us!

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

I made the transition a little over a year ago and, amazingly, it comes close to a uniformly positive experience. I think it is the fact I can pop up a terminal and suddenly I'm in Unix-land that really makes it for me, but the software written specifically for the Mac tends to be quite good as well.

For that reason I suggest you *do not* go with the Mac versions of standard software (including, yes, both MS Office and Open Office). Instead use NeoOffice or one of the Mac only word processors. They map better to the GUI.

Have fun!

Re: One of us! One of us!

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, replying to myself...

Look for something called Quicksilver. I can't describe it easily and its value won't be obvious to you at first. But it will change how you think about using a computer...

Re: One of us! One of us!

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

I'd already seen Quicksilver mentioned on one of the switch pages at the.taoofmac.com. (I've been watching his page for a long time. It's a shame he's dumped the photo banner - that was cool.) I'll definitely look at it.

Thanks.

Re: One of us! One of us!

[ckd]

I'm pretty happy with Pages, though I don't do a whole lot of word processing so I could probably get by with just TextEdit. Keynote...I love Keynote. It reminds me of how I felt about Powerpoint back before Microsoft bought it.

Re: One of us! One of us!

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Keynote rocks! True!

Re: One of us! One of us!

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Huh. I've never had a problem using MS Office on the Mac. I use my Mac at home, Windows at work and many times I'm using either machine to work on the same file.

[zannah.livejournal.com]

Yay!

I'm actually unpacking my Mac mini (from temporary storage) this evening!