The Switch
I did my part for the “switching” effort yesterday, turning a friend of mine into a switcher.
Of course you all know what I mean. A switcher from Windows to the Mac.
My friend has a few computers in her home. A Sony VAIO laptop, a Windows desktop from Dell which is in the shop (i.e.: my home office), and an aging Dell desktop. The aging machine was a Dell born over five years ago. It got “refurbished” (surprise! by me) last year. The memory was upgraded and Windows 98 was blown away and replaced by Windows XP.
Unfortunately, the machine wasn’t locked down for spyware a year ago since it wasn’t such a big problem then. When I recently tried to purge it, I had basically failed. Believe me, I went pretty deep into the system to fix it and came out empty.
Getting sick of repairing Windows, I decided to start touting the benefits of the Macintosh. She was instantly interested and that night we went down to the Apple Store at the Walt Whitman mall here on Lond Island and we started looking around.
We were focusing on two main configurations… a suped-up 17 in. iMac G5 and a suped-up Mac Mini with a gorgeous 20 in. cinema display. Both had to have 1GB of memory. The 17 in. G5 was hands down a “faster” machine (faster clock speed, newer processor generation) and the prices were basically equivalent. However, the Mac Mini was configured with the 20 in. display which was, side by side, blowing away the 17 in. iMac experience.
For what she needs, a Mac Mini seemed like a better buy. Word processing, e-mail, flash games. In the end, we configured a system like this:
- Mac Mini with wireless internet, bluetooth, SuperDrive, 80GB hard drive, and 1GB of RAM
- 20 inch cinema display
- Wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse
- 3–year AppleCare protection for $150, which covers the $800 display.
- 1–year .mac account
I know viruses and spyware are not such a big problem on the Mac, but I didn’t want to take a chance. The .mac account kind of gets you all of that protection, plus an e-mail account, web space, iCalendar sync’ing, etc.. Being kind of new to the Mac myself, I hope I didn’t make a mistake there.
Apple also offers the oddest thing. For $99 a year, you get ProCare. It has a few benefits, but the most surprising one was access to the Mac Genius’s any time you want. You just have to set up an appointment. These guys will sit down with you 1 on 1 and teach you anything you want to know about the Mac. Anything. Want to know how to configure your kid’s account for safe web access? Done. Want to know how to create a web page? Done. Want to know how to make movies and write them to DVD? Done. The only thing they won’t do is teach you how to use “Pro” applications like Final Cut Pro or use non-Apple programs. That makes sense of course.
I’m writing this in the morning so I’m not sure if the machine was assembled yet. I imagine I’ll be over there quite a bit for the first week, but my hope is that I won’t be needed so much anymore.
One more for the Gipper.