Re: Offtopic - Apple Macs

• Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Wright"

> >I know zip about Macs but maybe some of you do.
> >She will use it for dialup internet, email, photography and, I
> >suspect, screaming at. Oh, and it has to look nice.
> >I guess I will be obliged to vet and recommend.

> I'm a long standing Machead--except when I'm forced to use Wintel iron by
> a client. It's a far better machine than anything I've seen on the
> Windows end and proof positive that mother knows best. Typically she'll
> be up and running 20 minutes after she's piled the packaging in a
> corner, not counting the time to move furniture around (Why don't we try
> it over here instead? No, wait--I like working by the window. Of course,
> it may be too cold in the winter...) and the last minute rush to buy a
> power center when the power cord doesn't reach the wall socket. Get some
> telephone cable while you're at it.
>
> Internet connection is trivial--the machine will walk her through it, but
> she'll need a few particulars from her ISP. If she uses AOL it'll be a
> great opportunity to rescue her from that monster and get her associated
> witha real ISP. Sounds like she's got a digital camera, so the
> photography thing will be an extra treat. The only screaming will be
> yelps of delight when she sees how nice it looks.

And she's a lot less likely to get viruses by using a Mac. Undoubtedly, Chris has a list of share/freeware utilities that you can use to back up/fix the system should she manage to mess things up (mothers have a natural knack for this sort of thing, Without Even Touching Anything, it seems). The only downside I can see is the extra cost and less software being available for the platform.

If she's new to the internet, consider using Spamassassin at the server level (if you can - email me for further details) and setting up a white list for email filtering (anything other than mail from approved sources gets auto-deleted). For new people to the net this is a great solution to the ever-increasing spam problem.

Paul Received on Thu Oct 23 10:17:00 2003