My “Mac” Experience…Part 2

Yesterday we left off with me arriving at BestBuy. Right of the bat I noticed that the box was tiny! I mean I thought I was picking up a router or maybe a netbook but certainly not a 13" laptop. I couldn't wait to get it home and out of its protective yet miniscule packaging. I admit I was so full of anticipation I had to peek while stopped at a light. The drive home seemed to take forever! Finally I arrived and into the house I rushed clutching what promised to be the most wonderful piece of technology I own. I held my breath as I opened the box...Oh!...she is beautiful; all gleaming aluminum with that cute little apple on top. The first thing I noticed is that she feels solid and sturdy. That's good news for people who are hard on their laptops. I plugged her in and pressed the power button. Another cute apple on the screen to greet me followed by a very catchy musical interlude while welcome flashed on the screen in every conceivable language. I went through the standard type set up of languages, time, personal information etc. and finally I arrive at the home screen. Ok, I have to say, I'm diggin' it so far. The second thing I noticed is that it's backwards...let me elaborate. Those of us who use a PC are familiar with closing, minimizing or maximizing a window from the upper right hand corner. On a Mac, this is all done from the upper left hand corner and all the icons are across the bottom of the screen. Can you say different?? I must say that it was a snap connecting to my network and wireless printer. But this is where things get a little dicey. Keep in mind that I had never so much as laid hands on a Mac before this so cut me a little slack. At any rate, I wanted the Mac to be part of my existing home network which up to this point consisted of nothing but PC's. To this end, I started changing permissions on the Mac. Unfortunately, my inner control freak got the better of me and I decided to try and change the permissions on the entire hard drive. NEVER, I repeat NEVER do this on a Mac! Much to my dismay, I got a slew of extension errors which I said ok to and ignored. I then tried to restart the machine...tried being the key word here. Upon restart I got what I have seen others refer to as the "pinwheel of death", which is an apt description. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity with no progress I restarted. Again, the same result. Ok no biggie. I'll reinstall the operating system. That went smoothly enough. Again I tried changing the permissions. Yes, I can be a little stubborn and dense at times. Same result...after 3 tries I finally Googled the issue and found the answer. I know I stated this before but it bears repeating. NEVER try to change the permissions on the entire hard drive! Apparently it scrambles the file system beyond repair and the only choice is to reinstall the operating system. Lesson learned; the hard way I might add. But hey, I got a lot of experience installing the Mac OS which is a good thing. I will end Part 2 here. Tune in tomorrow for the third and final chapter in my Mac saga :)

Geek Girl