♬  You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
..
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right
all right, all right
all right, all right, all right…  ♬

Words and Music by Lennon/McCartney.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of blog entries dealing with moving into the Mac world after being a dedicated Windows user.  I have to admit that I have been intrigued by the Macintosh for some time, but didn’t really buy into the cachet of the Mac side of the street being greener and all that.  I felt that a computer was a tool and if you already understood and used a good tool, there was no reason to invest the time and money to change for change sake. That is, until I started having Microsoft/Windows problems.

There were numerous ones on several machines – networking issues, viruses and the usual malware – nothing that was earth-shattering in and of itself, but when I lost my office computer for a week due to unexplained Windows issues, I had literally had had it. There simply *had* to be a better way.

So I researched and researched – and settled on the MacBook with the 2.4 ghz intel processor, 2 gig ram,  the 160 gig hard drive and Microsoft Office for the Mac.  I have since downloaded Firefox for the Mac (being a dedicated Firefox user) along with several other smaller applications that I couldn’t live without that are available in both Windows and Mac versions.

Since one of my issues with the Windows machines was the difficulty in networking them all together and sharing files over my wireless network (which I attributed to having a Vista machine mixed with Windows XP machines, rightly or wrongly), I was pleasantly surprised that the MacBook not only detected the wireless network (only asking me for my wireless network password), but it also detected all the computers on the network on startup (including the Vista machine).  It also allowed me to view their shared folders right off the bat without my having to do anything. This was a very pleasant surprise and indeed, a good sign of things to come.

Installation of the Microsoft Office suite was straightforward and fast.  Similarly was  the installation of the smaller applications and setting up of my email account for thoughtfullaw.com.

So we are off to a great start.  Now if I can only figure out how to eject the Microsoft Office installation disk, I would be totally satisfied.  This is not a revolution – it is only just an evolution along the computing growth and learning curve. But somehow I think it is gonna be all right!