Hello Low End Mac Community!
My name is
. I am delighted to have the
opportunity to write for Low End Mac. In the coming months, I hope
to share with you my experiences and discoveries as a Mac user and
tinkerer.
Let me tell you a little about myself. I am 32 years old - born
and raised in New Jersey which is where I live now. My wife Jessica
and I have been married for 6 years, and we have a son named Ben.
For the past 10 years, I have worked in the employee benefits and
stock plan administration fields, primarily as a communications
writer, presenter and manager.
My first experiences with Macs were during my freshman year of
college at Rutgers University. The computer lab on my section of
the campus was a small, glass-walled section of a place called "The
Roost," a cavernous room in which many students met and talked, but
I can't believe many studied. There were about 35-40 Mac SEs and
Classics (perhaps a SE/30 or two for the lab administrators) lined
up on tables networked to 4 or 5 giant LaserWriter II printers that
just never seemed to stop printing. I wrote a number of papers on
those terrific little machines. I had a Brother word processor in
my dorm room, but I loved going to the lab to use one of the Macs.
The college rebuilt The Roost during my sophomore year, and they
reopened it with a lab about 10 times the size of the previous one
- by this time the Centris 610 had replaced the compact Macs, and
there were also IBM PCs and later, X Window terminals.
Around the same time, my parents bought my sister and me a
custom-built PC and a good friend bought a Performa 475. While the
PC served us very well for years, my friend's 475 was always more
appealing to me. It looked better, it did more, and it was just too
cool. A few years later, while hunting around on this ingenious new
website called eBay, I stumbled across an even better looking
computer - a Performa 580CD. Just a year out of college, I made it
my first big purchase. From the moment I took it out of the box, I
was hooked on it and the Macintosh.
So, what was it that hooked me? The Mac quickly reeled me in
with three qualities largely absent in other computers or machines:
style, comfort and accessibility. Apple has, more often than not,
been on the bleeding edge of style when it comes to the design and
function of their computers. From the initial integration of
graphics and sound back in the early days, to the now passé,
but nonetheless revolutionary design of the compact Macs (and their
younger and brightly colored cousins, the iMacs), to the
pacesetting design and functionality of most everything Steve Jobs
has touched in his second-coming, Apple makes and markets computers
with panache. They don't appeal to everyone, but they appeal to
me.
From the first time I sat down at a Mac SE in my college
computer lab to write a paper, I have been struck by how
comfortable Macs are to use. The interface, the integration of
software and hardware, the design elements, the ahead-of-their-time
technologies all combine to create a machine that simply allows you
to get stuff done with a minimum of stress or confusion.
As I began delving into the history of the Mac and the various
machines that have born that title over the years, I was struck by
how accessible the technology was to the average tinkerer like me.
Its accessibility rests on two pillars - one is the unique design
of the Mac and the second, and most important, is the community of
Mac users that support these machines. Some call it a cult... I
call it a community. Low End Mac is one part of that community. The
more I read, the more I learned from others like me, and the easier
and more comfortable it became to tear apart a Mac and put it back
together again, knowing that when I hit the power button, I'd hear
that familiar Mac chime. It became great fun to find old Macs on
eBay or from folks who didn't want them anymore and figure out how
to get them running again.
I've had many Macs, but right now, I have two that I call my
own. My very own "digital hub" is an iBook of the 2002 vintage...
900 MHz G3, 640 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive, CD-RW/DVD, FireWire, USB,
all the rest. I also own a souped up PowerBook 1400c, that I'll
tell you more about in another column.
The focus of my column will be on the Macs I've tinkered with -
the older Macs from the SE to the Quadra to the pre-G3
PowerMacs.
I'll tell you more about how I got started with Macs, why I like
them, my view on the question of Mac vs. PC, my wife's take on all
of this, and what I've learned through tinkering with a long line
of Macs of all stripes. You'll hear more about the first Mac I
owned - the aforementioned Performa 580CD. You'll also hear about
my beloved PowerBook 5300cs, my super-neat SuperMac C600, my
diamond-in-the-rough PowerMac 4400, and my true-blue iMac DV (okay,
so that last one is not that old, but it is my favorite so that has
to count for something, no? ).
You'll also hear about the wagonload of other Macs that have
passed through my home (and that my wife has kidded me about) over
the years - from at least 2 SE/30s that I can remember to a slew of
the Mac II varieties and a stack of PowerBooks - most of which left
in better shape than when they arrived.
I look forward to sharing what I know and learning more from you
as well.
- System 7.6.1 is perfect for
many older Macs, 2006.03.24. Want the best speed from your old
Mac? System 7.6.1 can give you that with a fairly small memory
footprint - also helpful on older Macs.
- Casual comfort: Why I use a
Mac, 2006.01.25. "For me, the difference between Macs and PCs
is like the difference between work clothes and casual
clothes."
- 4 offbeat Mac games,
2005.12.05. A look at Apeiron, Meat Gone Mad, Postman Pat, and
Pocket Tanks - four unusual games for Macs new or old.
- Macs, computers with
panache, 2005.11.09. "Apple makes and markets computers with
panache. They don't appeal to everyone, but they appeal to
me."
