Dear WAMUGgers I thought you might like to read this little tale, described as it unfolded today. We have just been offered laptops under the Department's 'Notebooks for Teachers Program'. Acers, of course; no sight yet of any Apple option. I'm saying yes to the offer, but only when the Apple option becomes available.
Teacher 2 says yes to the Acer as he uses a PC at home anyway, and Teacher 3 is undecided because she doesn't like the legalistic gobbledegook of the contract. She also likes the iBook, especially the Combo with DVD and CD-R but her husband has a PC laptop at home, and he is the one who will help her. She finally signs for the Acer. Not likely we'll become an 'Apple Distinguished School'. Teacher 1 has used the iBooks at school and at home and decided today that he wanted to take one home to do some school work tonight in front of the TV. (A sort of 'Clayton's Computer maybe?) He asks me for help to install Micro$oft Office on it as he uses Word at home. That's Ok; we have Office 2001 for Mac OS 9 and Office vX for OS X. He opts for the OS 9 installation as our Kyocera laser printer prints rubbish in OS X. (Also Enjie has our OS X disk!). We cannot install OS 9 software properly when in OS X so we restart in 9. Then we go to install it, only to find it has already been installed. That's Ok Reg, now let's restart in OS X. Accidentally we restarted in 9 again. We restart in OS X and drag a Word icon to the dock. That's good. Now let's test it. It loads Word, loading 'Classic' mode to run. Um, I remember Doreen said that AirPort doesn't work in 'Classic' mode, and he wants to print his worksheets tomorrow morning on the networked Kyocera. We'll look in the Chooser. Sure enough, no network; no networked printers. Ok let's restart in 9. This we do and make an alias on the desktop for Word. Check the Chooser. No, nothing there. It's the first time we've used OS 9 this way on the Mac. Open the Control Panels; activate AppeTalk, TCP/IP and File Sharing via AirPort. (Not that we need all that but you know, when he wants to get the internet later tomorrow, he might as well get it without going through this again!) Test print a Word document we create, carrying one word: 'Help'. It prints. Victory at last. So now he has gone home to watch whatever with the iBook on his lap, and to sit in waiting for his Acer with Windows XP. What delights will await him then? hopefully he won't need to go through this again. The point of this recount, really, is this, on reflection. I know about Macs; enough to get by and sometimes to help others. I've used them for 12 years. What would the novice Mac user do if he or she encountered the same problem? It hardly sounds user-friendly... or have I missed something? Regards Reg
