Entering into the world of iMac

8.35am on a Sunday morning. I’m up and fooling around with my new toy: iMac.

Having been a PC user all my life, I must admit that the Mac OS X interface took some getting used too. However, any concerns I had were easily addressed after an hour of flipping through “Mac OS for dummies” and surfing the web for specific information that I needed. Looking back, I must say that Mac OS user experience is truly intuitive and if I were a Mac User going on to Windows, it might not have been so easy for me.  #justsaying

This iMac came to me by chance as a 4th generation hand me down. If I’m not wrong, it is 4/5 years old (2007) and was resold as a refurbished unit. Since then it has changed hands at least 2 more times before the “last” owner finally released it to my custody. Reason: He wanted to buy a faster machine more suitable for coding….okay so I figured….what the heck! Its free, ain’t it? Let me take it over, fool around with the Mac OS and find out what the fuss is all about. I must say….LUCKY LUCKY ME!

The first thing I realized when I placed it on my table was….damn…doesn’t the iMac make my trusted PC look rather shoddy. Like an excited child during christmas, I plugged in the power cord and the iMac purred to life. I didn’t really know how to operate a Mac so I deftly clicked on any button I could find and quickly realised that the Mac was *gasps* indeed rather laggy. I was a tad bit disappointed but being a seasoned PC user, accustomed to Window’s legendary lagginess, I would say that I was not completely unfazed by the whole experience. Further checking of the specs proved my suspicion that the iMac was indeed running on, what I would consider, rather modest hardware, namely: 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 duo processor, 1GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 250GB drive.

Okay, Operation “save the iMac” starts. Here goes:

I plugged in the Mac OS X CD and proceeded to do a complete  reformat and reinstall of Snow Leopard. It took about 45 minutes and when I was done, the iMac blared to LIFE. No issues with drivers whatsoever…and the computer started running noticeably faster.

Next up, I did a little more research and then went out to buy a 2GB RAM (since this iMac tops at 3GB). The RAM cost me about SGD 45 dollars. Good price for a completely free iMac. Yup, I’m not complaining. 😀

After turning my iMac upside down, I finally managed to find the right place to insert the RAM. I am not the most careful person when it comes to hardware so I had my fingers crossed when I proceeded to switch the Mac back on. iMac proves itself to be idiot proof! The Mac correctly registered the new memory as 3GB. I gleefully started downloading more apps from the Mac App store.

Since then, I’ve went out to invest in the Magic touchpad. It cost me SGD 90 dollars but I’m so in love with it. Totally worth it. Upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion would help me make better use of my trackpad and I considered the option for a while but Apple has just announced the upcoming release of Mac OS X Mountain Lion in summer and since it seems like I can upgrade directly from Snow Leopard to this new platform, I guess I better wait.

I am a MAC convert 😀

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