Goodbye PC, Hello Mac

Over the weekend we bought ourselves a new computer- an iMac! My old computer, a HP desktop that I’ve had since at least 2003 or so, has pretty much died. It still works, but only if you have the patience to wait about 10 minutes for it to load something. Apparently it caught some sort of virus a while back, but it never really seemed to recover. It would run slower and slower until I would have to restart the thing and try again. Plus, at the beginning of the spring semester, it completely stopped opening any kind of Microsoft Office document for some odd reason, which forced me to complete all my schoolwork on campus. Irritating! Therefore, we have been looking into buying a new computer for quite some time.

Anyone that knows me knows that I hate computers. That’s why we finally settled on a Mac. Many of our friends own only Macs and swear by them. Plus, I learned that I was eligible for a student discount through my school, which we wanted to take advantage of before I officially finish my program next month.

After comparing prices and options at the Apple Store, we ended up with a 24” iMac with a 640MB hard drive, which seemed to be the best value for the money (we just couldn’t pass up on the 24” screen- for just $50 more- it was so sleek and impressive!) We were very happy to learn that my student discount took $100 off our total bill, threw in a free printer, and even included a free iPod touch! We took it home that day and set it up in no more than 5 minutes- there were no programs to install, no annoying virus software to update- just one power cord to plug in and that was that. It detected our wireless internet and the wireless keyboard and mouse instantly. How easy! Then we set up our user account and played around on it for a few hours. We had fun amusing ourselves on the photo booth application, taking stupid pictures of ourselves. :)

I’m still new to Mac, so I’m sure it will take a while before I feel proficient working on it. But so far, I think we’re both impressed. I’m also excited to buy iScrapbook- a cool program where I can create digital scrapbook pages!