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Paradise Found

My “Precious” (the name for my new eMac) arrived on Monday, after days of waiting and hundreds of visits to fedex.com to see exactly where it was every step of the way. So that’s why I haven’t posted for a few days, been too busy exploring the new system and getting everything setup! Not that it was difficult to setup or anything, my wife had already cut the tape on the box, so that I could unpack it as soon as I got home, so I just pulled it out of the box and plugged everything up, then fired it up for the very first time.

The setup went flawlessly, asking me to set my time zone, passwords, internet settings, register, etc. My cable modem was recognized and setup immediately, even before the computer had completely booted to the desktop, because I registered online during the setup process.

After all of that I saw my new desktop for the very first time, hooray! :)

Since I had setup my email account during the setup process, I fired up Mail and it loaded all of my emails and folders (I use IMAP) immediately.

I then checked out Safari, setup my AIM account to work with iChat, setup a few people in the Address Book, etc. I had all of our digital pictures on a CD from the old PC, so I put that in and dragged the folders to iPhoto, which imported each one as its own album. They are all there and look great. Total compatibility!

I had all my MP3’s on the iPod already, and didn’t want to have to network the PC or burn CD’s to get them onto the Mac, so I used xPod to transfer all of the songs into my Music folder. After a less than ten minute wait, all 1,200 of them had been transferred to my new machine. Then a quick Command+O imported them all into my iTunes library. After that I used iSync to sync my iPod, which added my contacts and calendar to the iPod, as well as the playlists from iTunes.

I also setup my new .Mac account, downloaded Backup 2.0 and took advantage of the other Member Freebies that are currently being offered, then setup my iDisk and all of that stuff. It was all seamless, fast and easy.

After all of that I started downloading programs, Launchbar, Konfabulator, MSN Messenger (I know, I know, but all my friends use that one), ImageWell, Synergy, and more.

I also setup my MX700 mouse, which is great, and the PowerMate, which really does make scrolling fun!

Tonight is the first night I really feel at home on the Mac. The first couple of nights were good, and I was excited, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with the system yet. Today however, the third night of using it, I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable and am enjoying the system even more. I’ve burned CD’s, tried the audio chat on iChat (awesome), etc. My jaw has literally dropped several times tonight, finding new features that just blow my mind, having come from the Windows world.

Unfortunately I still have to use Windows all day at work, which is just heart breaking. It truly is depressing to have to leave the Mac World every day to go back to “Hell”. :) But hopefully that will change soon, as I am still planning on getting a PowerBook at work as soon as my boss is ready.

Speaking of MacWorld, Apple sent me a free 12 month subscription to the MacWorld magazine today. I opted for the electronic version, which you download, then read on a program called Zinio. The delivery is immediate, and it’s easy to store archives of the magazine on your hard drive, instead of having stacks of wrinkled magazines all over.

I just downloaded Kung-Log tonight, which is a program that interfaces with MovableType, letting you edit posts on your computer without having to do it through the web interface. The best part about this is that you can have realtime spellchecking, as opposed to, well, no spellchecking at all. So anyway, I’m using that to write this post and it is quite nice.

So that is what has been going on with me lately. I plan on posting thorough reviews of all my new stuff over the coming weeks, so expect a lot of nerdy Mac posts for a while. Well, forever probably, because I am never going back to Windows, and I’m always going to be excited about the Mac and be talking/writing about it all the time! :)

Congrats on your first Mac-

I’ve never been a Windows user, but I play one at work— repair and maintenance, mainly, and after making money fixing Windows issues, I would never buy one for myself.

In the past years, I have gotten most of my family over to the Mac side, as well, for then the support calls go WAY down.

I hope the eMac came with Panther as advertised— it is worth every penny I paid. Astonishingly good.

T (on the Mac side of life since 1988)

Yes, the eMac did come preinstalled with Panther, which was nice. I’ve always been a Windows user, since my first computer when I was around 12. So it’s a pretty big change for me. But I couldn’t be more pleased. I just shake my head most of the time on it, wondering how it could be so different and so much better, and why I didn’t switch a long time ago! :)