From the MacTop of a MacNewbie... Part 1

From the MacTop of a one-year-old MacUser. Been a PC user for almost 25 years. Touched my first computer at 16. Hah! So, 16 was kinda digitally memorable too. LOL! Supposed to be the beginning of many firsts in one's life. Anyway, school had a computer club then under Mr Loh Keok Seng (I hope I got his name right). I learned some BASIC programming.. but forgotten everything liao. And the following year I became the Prez of the Comp Club. 8)

In uni, I had access to a PC as Bro was studying IT. It was quite a new field then... back in the early 90s. Softwares I used? Word Star, Lotus 123. Games I played? PacMan and one which I was particularly fond of - Xenon. Don't know why the name still stuck on after so many years.

And the monitor?? First it was only one colour.... everything on the screen was green, the monochrome monitor. Then came the black and white - composite, I think. And it was an improvement from the green blinking screen before. Then the CGA, VGA, SVGA, etc, etc. Wikipedia probably has the complete history.

Anyway, I kinda got sucked into the computer revolution thingy. Came out to work... Other Half likes computers. It was one of those very few luxury items we allowed ourselves. The AT, Pentium 3, etc, etc came and went (and stayed) in our lives... As did Jaring, then TMNet, Streamyx, Celcom Broadband...and now we're looking into WiMax. Still remembered that setting up the connection those days required quite a bit of effort... terms that we encountered - TCP/IP, Winsock, FTP, pinging. Mana ada, plug and play then? Even our computer vendor didn't know how to set up the Internet Connection and had a short lesson from Other Half. And ah! Our first notebook - a Twinhead. But the hinge tak tahan.

Then I got involved in developing the IT stuff in school, mostly getting the hardware and later, networking. Those days, it was a big deal to use stuffs like PowerPoint to teach or present. So, I became my boss' pet. What to do, I was willing to go where few would go back then. Actually I have a good man behind me... that's why I dared ventured into the new frontier. Lucky me! 8)

Had a colleague's daughter who sent a router all the way back from the US and we used it to start our own network at school. Me and another colleague tarik the Cat 5 wires ourselves. Did our own crimping. Tools were expensive then but we had a very supportive boss. Allowed us to try even though he knew we might fail.

Because of my 'recklessness' too, I got sent for some courses in various unis. Learnt a little about Macromedia, Photoshop, Sound Forge... and then got involved in some web-based thingy and started using the HTML which was rather painstaking. Even started teaching courses for other teachers conducted by the State Edu Deparment! Made our own animated gifs in those days... wrote some educational web based stuff. Learning curve was pretty steep. But it was kinda fun too. So, I can be considered kinda an entrenched PC diehard-ist!

Then came the opportunity to help set up a full fledged computer lab... planning, budgeting, procurement, networking, hardware for normal sighted as well as the visually impaired. It was then a new technology, new frontier. By then the WWW allowed me to look up latest technology for the visually impaired. Was a good experience... I've had some experience reading for a blind friend at uni, so I appreciated how much technology had advanced by then for them. It made a world of difference actually.

Over the years, knew about the Mac... but never thought of owning or getting one. Different OS and the price kinda served as a deterrent. But finally, last year... we decided to try one. Other Half has always labelled Microsoft as the Dark Force. So, with that, we took the plunge and plonked in a small fortune for my Mac..... to be continued

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From the MacTop of a MacNewbie... Part 2