Friday, March 25, 2005
So I’ve had this PowerBook for about 10 hours now. What a day it’s been. I’ve had about three of those hours to actually get to know my new Mac. Here’s the story so far.
As I unpacked the computer I couldn’t help but notice how detailed the packaging was. In my life as a K-12 technology administrator, I’ve had the opportunity to unpack over 100 Dell or Compaq laptop computers. Nobody has packaging like Apple. Nobody. It looks like its been designed by the same people who design the cases.
The case is a work of simple art. Clean lines of machined aluminum. Everything fits together with close tolerances. I’m impressed. The top opens easily, yet the hinges are tight. No bouncing screen like the Dell Inspiron 8100 I replaced last November with a new Dell Latitude 600. This is one nice box to be sure.
I opened the power supply first. Knowing that this computer just arrived from China yesterday and had been sitting in a warehouse for a while, I knew the battery should be fully charged before I went mobile. Once I had the power supply plugged in, I sat down in my easy chair, picked up the Powerbook and plugged the power supply connector into the side-mounted connector. The connector looks like an oversized RCA jack and the power supply has the related plug. As I plugged it in a ring round the perimeter of the plug briefly turned green and the changed to amber. Ah, the Apple engineers thought this feature through nicely. The connection is verified by the light. The color of the light indicates the battery state. My guess is that the ring will turn back to green once the battery is fully charged.
I pressed the power button conveniently mounted on the face of the computer in the right hand speaker grille. That Apple sound played and I knew I was on my way. The OS went through its very friendly set up routine. I wondered if it would find my wireless network. I expected that it wouldn’t since it is set up to not broadcast its name. My suspicions were confirmed when I had to bypass the network setup stuff.
Once I had the initial set-up completed I set the wireless configuration. Fairly easily done once I changed the WEP key setup to look for a 40 character ASCII key. The Powerbook associated with my network, grabbed a DHCP issued network address and I was off an running on the Internet. First order of business add some entries to my blog to begin describing my new adventure in the world of Macintosh.
Friday, March 25, 2005
An amazing world
Friday, March 25, 2005
It’s absolutely amazing. I ordered this Powerbook on Wednesday afternoon (March 22, 2005). I issued a PO to Wade Oehler in Irving, Texas for a 15”, 1.67Ghz, Superdrive Powerbook and asked him to add the three year extended warranty, an extra power supply (to leave on my desk) and the iWork software program.
Once the PO got to Irving he put the order process into place. I have no idea what that means at all. I only know that I got an order confirmation email before the end of the workday.
I received a shipping confirmation email the next morning that had tracking numbers for both Apple and for FedEx. So I checked the status. I was surprised to find that the order had shipped already. The original order confirmation said that I should receive the shipment on or before April 4, 2005. That’s 12 days from the order date. I figured that gave them plenty of time to ship the unit since I had not requested any faster shipping method.
But the shipping information on the FedEx site said that the unit had shipped on the evening of the 23rd. I thought; “Hey, this thing should be hear by Monday!” Wait a minute, it arrived at the FedEx ramp at 8:16PM on the 23rd. Then it got moved to some other shipping point and arrived there at 10:36, after the cut off time. But it’s only 3:00pm now. Double check – where is it being shipped from? I assumed Cuppertino, CA or Irving Tx. But it might have been some other warehouse too. It says: “Shanghai, CN.” Hmm… CN, Connecticut is CT, what’s CN. Oh! Shanghai, China! Well that explains the possible April delivery date.
This morning, Friday, March 25, 2005, I checked the status again, fully expecting to find that it was on some FedEx receiving dock in the states waiting to be air shipped to a local delivery depot. But FedEx was way ahead of that. The package left Shanghai at 10:40 the previous evening. I guess the cutoff time must have something to do with overnight delivery times because it left Shanghai 4 minutes after the cutoff message. To make a long story a bit shorter, by 8:43 on Friday morning, it was on a Lansing, Mi, USA delivery truck.
Too bad our offices are closed today for the Easter holiday. But Lake Odessa is a small town and I routinely see the FedEx truck driving around. So I got in my pickup and took a drive. 10 minutes later I saw the FedEx truck on the main drag. I identified myself to the driver and upon displaying proper ID and affixing my signature to his pick-up register, I had the Powerbook in hand.
Yes. It’s amazing, I’m typing this on a brand new Apple Powerbook on Friday at about noon. Wednesday, two days ago, it was in a warehouse in Shanghai, China. What an amazing world we live in.
It’s absolutely amazing. I ordered this Powerbook on Wednesday afternoon (March 22, 2005). I issued a PO to Wade Oehler in Irving, Texas for a 15”, 1.67Ghz, Superdrive Powerbook and asked him to add the three year extended warranty, an extra power supply (to leave on my desk) and the iWork software program.
Once the PO got to Irving he put the order process into place. I have no idea what that means at all. I only know that I got an order confirmation email before the end of the workday.
I received a shipping confirmation email the next morning that had tracking numbers for both Apple and for FedEx. So I checked the status. I was surprised to find that the order had shipped already. The original order confirmation said that I should receive the shipment on or before April 4, 2005. That’s 12 days from the order date. I figured that gave them plenty of time to ship the unit since I had not requested any faster shipping method.
But the shipping information on the FedEx site said that the unit had shipped on the evening of the 23rd. I thought; “Hey, this thing should be hear by Monday!” Wait a minute, it arrived at the FedEx ramp at 8:16PM on the 23rd. Then it got moved to some other shipping point and arrived there at 10:36, after the cut off time. But it’s only 3:00pm now. Double check – where is it being shipped from? I assumed Cuppertino, CA or Irving Tx. But it might have been some other warehouse too. It says: “Shanghai, CN.” Hmm… CN, Connecticut is CT, what’s CN. Oh! Shanghai, China! Well that explains the possible April delivery date.
This morning, Friday, March 25, 2005, I checked the status again, fully expecting to find that it was on some FedEx receiving dock in the states waiting to be air shipped to a local delivery depot. But FedEx was way ahead of that. The package left Shanghai at 10:40 the previous evening. I guess the cutoff time must have something to do with overnight delivery times because it left Shanghai 4 minutes after the cutoff message. To make a long story a bit shorter, by 8:43 on Friday morning, it was on a Lansing, Mi, USA delivery truck.
Too bad our offices are closed today for the Easter holiday. But Lake Odessa is a small town and I routinely see the FedEx truck driving around. So I got in my pickup and took a drive. 10 minutes later I saw the FedEx truck on the main drag. I identified myself to the driver and upon displaying proper ID and affixing my signature to his pick-up register, I had the Powerbook in hand.
Yes. It’s amazing, I’m typing this on a brand new Apple Powerbook on Friday at about noon. Wednesday, two days ago, it was in a warehouse in Shanghai, China. What an amazing world we live in.
A Brand New Powerbook G4
In the last couple of years or so, I've been watching the development of the OSX operating system. Apple dumped the old OS, revamped a version of UNIX, BSD Linux I think, slapped a new interface on the front end and created a very elegant and user friendly OS.
I've hemmed and hawed ever since about becoming a "Switcher." I even bought a G4 PowerPC once and implemented it into my audio and video studio. That lasted about a month before I sold it. I liked the OS, but it wasn't fast enough to edit video really and I have a bunch of Windows plug-ins for ProTools that I couldn't afford to replicate on the Mac. That was a year and a half ago.
Being a Network Admin at a K-12 school district, I have the opportunity to see and evaluate a lot of software. I also have the need to upgrade equipment and the mandate to be stingy about it. Thus the revisit to Apple OSX and the Macintosh. I have a lab with 5 year old computers, Pentium 400 Celerons, running Windows 98. That lab is probably the most current lab at Lakewood High School. As a matter of fact it is the most current lab in the entire district! That's a sad fact, but true. Enter the Mac Mini. For $479 per seat (26 seats) I can upgrade that lab to a very capable state. I just have to make sure the OS will play nice with Windows 2003 server, Active directory and the rest. I'm told it will.
So I've been researching these Macintosh computers, OSX and the applications available for them. In short, I've been very impressed. I am also impressed with Apple's very up front commitment to education both with hardware and with software. Al I need is some assurance that the OS will really do what they claim. So I've made one small Switch. I ordered a Powerbook G4 for my own use.
I've hemmed and hawed ever since about becoming a "Switcher." I even bought a G4 PowerPC once and implemented it into my audio and video studio. That lasted about a month before I sold it. I liked the OS, but it wasn't fast enough to edit video really and I have a bunch of Windows plug-ins for ProTools that I couldn't afford to replicate on the Mac. That was a year and a half ago.
Being a Network Admin at a K-12 school district, I have the opportunity to see and evaluate a lot of software. I also have the need to upgrade equipment and the mandate to be stingy about it. Thus the revisit to Apple OSX and the Macintosh. I have a lab with 5 year old computers, Pentium 400 Celerons, running Windows 98. That lab is probably the most current lab at Lakewood High School. As a matter of fact it is the most current lab in the entire district! That's a sad fact, but true. Enter the Mac Mini. For $479 per seat (26 seats) I can upgrade that lab to a very capable state. I just have to make sure the OS will play nice with Windows 2003 server, Active directory and the rest. I'm told it will.
So I've been researching these Macintosh computers, OSX and the applications available for them. In short, I've been very impressed. I am also impressed with Apple's very up front commitment to education both with hardware and with software. Al I need is some assurance that the OS will really do what they claim. So I've made one small Switch. I ordered a Powerbook G4 for my own use.
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