So my friends and family know now that I'm a mac fan. I switch to Mac in June of 2008 and seem to brag about how they are fun to use and reliable. Well months of using it next to Janet and her building frustration with using her PC finally came to an end. I had done everything I could to help her computer run better and less frustrating. I put Windows 7 on it, stripped off the junk and installed a light weight virus protection ESET Nod 32. Things were a little better in the beginning but the PC frustrations came back as soon as bit rot started to set in. So she twittered about it being frustrated and I replied with time to get a mac. We met up at the apple store and got one. Actually I upgraded to the 17" and she got the 15" which worked out well for both of us.
So far she is able to do everything she use to do. The learning curve for her isn't as big as it was for her because most of her time is spent online and in itunes. There isn't much difference in the user experience in those programs. She is really enjoying the instant wake ability of it in the morning. Open the lid and 5-8 seconds later it's ready to use. She is really appreciating the quality of the computer and the polished user interface. That makes us both happy.
Matt, my long time co worker, has a wife that uses her computer for her business. She had an old emachine that was really a turd. With the conficker virus going to do an update on April 1st she was trying to get it updated so it was protected. This computer has been a frustration for her from day one with constant fights with viruses, slow downs, issues that were unexplainable. So Matt showed up at work with the computer and asked if I could help make sure they were secure. I agreed to help because i'm the computer guy, right? I get the big ugly box and plug it in. It fires up and it sounds like a jet engine and off it goes. After it boots up I try to work with it but it is trying to load America Online and other stuff and it was pretty unresponsive for at least 5 minutes. It was very frustrating to deal with that old thing. They had 512 megs of ram and it was very under powered for Windows XP even. With all the frustration they have faced over the years with this machine and it was her business machine she used for her ebay auction site I strongly suggested it was time for a new computer. They know i'm a mac fan and after some discussion they were willing to upgrade. Obviously they didn't want to spend the money but they did anyway. Off to the Mac store for a mac mini we go.
So we get the mac employee from this commercial (Spoof)
Yes, I think the salesguy was high. So we looked at the computers and he decided on the cheapest one. I do think the base mac mini has too little ram so I wish they would have got an extra gig of ram but he didn't want to spend the money and they can alway add the memory afterwards. So we got it back and I had Matt do the hookup so that he knew how to do it when they got it home. He operated the computer for all the setup and we were up and running. You cant tell by the picture but look at the CD slot size and the whole computer isn't much bigger. He was impressed on how small this thing was. I went through some things for about an hour with him and as a non computer person he was blown away at how nice and easy it was.
So his wife came in at the end of the day after work for a quick training session to get her up and running. Mac's are a bit different and it takes some getting use to. I spent about an hour going through the same stuff as I did with Mac and she was also blown away. I researched a replacement ebay auction program for her because the one she was using isn't compatible with mac. Her old program was free but she paid .10 per listing to use it. The one I found for the Mac was $35 to purchase but there were no ongoing fees so in a couple months she'll have paid for he application "garagesale" from the savings. Before she got here I played with the app to get familiar with it and so I could show her how to get up and running. She couldn't believe how beautiful the interface and themes that it came with were. Her auctions will be so much nicer than they were. Also I went through her workflow with her and showed her some other things such as when she finds a picture on Ebay she wants to use she can just drag it off onto her desktop. With windows you have to right click and save and or screen shot. Usually the images have extra stuff around them so you end up screen capturing it. Then with windows you have lots of extra work to crop it. With mac it's three keys and you drag some cross hairs around the image and it puts a picture on your desktop in the form of a file. I also helped her get setup on iChat so that if she had problems she could ping me and I could quickly answer it. Another cool built in function of iChat is that it has remote desktop control. We set it up (checked a box for sharing) and tried it out. Very easy. It worked like a charm.
That night they got it setup at home and after a bit of using it I got an iChat message telling me thanks and that she loved the computer. The next day I think between Matt and his wife they thanked me 4-5 times. They started trumpeting what I have been saying for the last year is that people that dont have macs dont know what they are missing. I've never heard of a switcher regretting it. They are pleased and the more she uses it the more comfortable she is with it.
