- Kim Bach . Org - https://www.kimbach.org -

I’m finally home

After 20 years of being stuck with boring PCs, I’m now the proud owner of a real computer. A Mac!

The vision of the DynaBook [1] has been made into reality by the fantastic Apple PowerBook G4 12″ [2] 37 years later we can actually build the thing! Thank you Apple. I’ve also placed an order for a Mac Mini [3]. I predict that the Mac Mini will sell like hot cakes, I’m doing my share promoting this ultra cool computer. It’s the computer for the rest of the world – WHY does a PC look the same as it did 25 years ago – beats me! And yes Macs do run Microsoft Office [4]. My dream home setup, Mac Mini, WLAN, wireless keyboard and mouse and a projector, and it will be a reality in 1-2 weeks. But why oh why didn’t Bang & Olufsen (B&O) produce the Apple supertoys? It’s actually a disgrace.

Speaking of disgrace, or rather disappointment. OpenOffice [5] just doesn’t work. I can work around the quirks, but the Mac is supposed to be a the computer with an “automatic transmission”. Problems with OpenOffice ranges from the fact that use of danish characters in filenames is illegal to problems importing some Word documents. I’m switching to Microsoft Office for now – MS does know their apps – and the Mac versions are very sleek indeed.

After this disappointment, I’m happy to report that the universial instant messenger client Adium X [6] works really well. It has a really cool design and it works perfectly with MSN. 5 minuttes after I got the link, I was MSN’ing from my PowerBook – highly recommended. According the the Adium website the following IM protocols are supported: AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, Rendezvous, Yahoo! Japan, Gadu-Gadu, Jabber, Napster, Lotus Sametime (via the Meanwhile plugin, and Novell GroupWise.

More about my experiences in Mac wonderland. I’ve taken the red pill – Kansas is going bye-bye.