My daughter’s computer is an old PowerMac 7600.
This was just fine for her basic educational software up until I finally drew a network cable to her room to get the computer on the Internet this last weekend. Not that her trusty old Mac doesn’t hook up to the Internet just fine … it does. Rather, once we got it online, I had the hardest time finding a modern web browser for OS 9! You know, something that could handle Flash and all of the new HTML standards being used on sites these days.
I was able to download Opera for it, but gosh darn if it wasn’t so slooooow on that old computer. Especially when a Flash site such as Barbie.com or Disney.com was up. Dang near dragged that computer to its knees! I can’t really blame Opera though. It’s a great browser and I’d recommend it to anyone — it’s just an old computer.
Unfortunately there’s no development of Mozilla or Firefox for OS 9 — only OS X. And Apple never developed Safari for OS 9 that I know of, so that left me with one other option:
I gritted my teeth and downloaded IE 5.1 for the Mac. Yes, I know, in light of my recent rant, perhaps I shouldn’t do that, but you should know that any product developed by Microsoft for the Mac is completely different than the similarly named product for the PC. It’s two different development teams! This means you’ll often find kick-ass features in the Mac versions you’d never find on Windows … but I digress.
Anyway, that was working okay … though still not overly fast.
In the mean time, Apple and Steve Jobs were getting ready to announce new products at MacWorld 2005 and it had been rumoured for a couple weeks that they were going to introduce a new, headless, Mac for $500. This was something that would be perfect for my daughter as the PowerMac is already headless (this means without a monitor, btw). So I could use the existing display and get her a new box for about $500! It’s hard to buy a good USED Mac for that money that wouldn’t be obsolete the day I get it, and a new one would be OS X capable as well. A new Mac would be powerful enough to last her a few years. As hard as it was to watch her slow screen, I had to wait and see what came out of Apple on Tuesday. (1/11)
All day at work I monitored the news sites to see what was being announced. iPod Shuffle? Great but not what I was after. OS X Tiger? Okay, knew about that already! This and that and the other thing until … MAC Mini! Cool.
I spent a lot of time looking over the specs and comparing them to the eMac (their next lowest priced computer) and realized that the Mac mini really couldn’t be beat! In my estimation what Apple did here was take the guts of the old “desk lamp” iMac of 2003 and slapped it in another box. But, still, what you end up with is a pretty powerful desktop computer that is 2″ high and only 6.5″ inches on a side. Pretty incredible.
After negotiating with my wife and checking to see if we really could budget it, I took the plunge and ordered one Tuesday night. Yes, we will need to save here and there to pay for it, but once our daughter has it, the benefits to her will pay for the machine with no problem. Being homeschooled, our daughter needs a good computer that won’t turn her off because it’s too slow. She needs a computer that will run the latest software. And having a computer that can occassionaly entertain her when the evening comes is a plus as well.
To tie in with my previous rant, my daughter needs a computer not prone to the latest viruses and worms plaguing the Windows world every day … My daughter needs a Mac.
(Republished from ESC!Webs Blogitorials, January 2005)
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