A few days ago I wrote about upgrading my iMac from 32 MB memory to 384 MB, and from 6 GB hard disk to 80 GB. Now I’ve installed OS X, and am doing my first post from the iMac. It’s quite an eye-opener. I haven’t yet taken advantage of the many features that people say the Mac offers. However, some observations might be in order:
1) The installation, while relatively simple, is not intuitive. OS X told me that it couldn’t install on the 80 GB hard disk because it had to be in the first 8 GB of the disk. All well and good; why then didn’t it offer to partition the disk for me appropriately and then continue with the install? Instead I had to struggle with a disk utility that was itself not particularly intuitive. That over, I had to reboot yet again in order to start the install anew as the program refused resolutely to recognise that the disk had been partitioned.
2) That being said, once the installation happened the machine fully configured the Ethernet connection for me; no struggling as with OS 8 and OS 9.
3) Wonder of wonders, it has now found the printer on my PC. However, it still won’t print through it. Another mystery for another day.
4) Instead of the horrible round green Apple mouse, I not only put a Microsoft optical mouse on the machine, I was able to download software that allows it to be left/right hand configured. The scroll wheel works.
Does this mean that I’ll become a Mac-head and toss all the PCs out? I don’t think so. However, it’s always nice to have a new toy with which to play. Now I have one, and it’s exciting. WL can now surf Chinese websites from the kitchen table with full rendering of the Chinese characters.