Success and Failure

So far, I have experienced alternate successes and failures with getting up to speed on our new iMac (10.5.1, Leopard). There are some basic things that I have been trying to accomplish. Here is my report card to date:

1. I needed word processing software but don't want to use MS Word or Pages because I just don't want to pay for this type of software anymore. Open source solutions should work. Thus, I downloaded OpenOffice and installed it on the machine. For a newb, just downloading and installing software on OS X is a challenge. I felt stunted to say the least. Example: Downloading Firefox and getting it to run from the executable directly seems to have been a chore. I am still not sure I got it right. Sigh. I guess I need to do some more basic reading on this thing. In the end though, OpenOffice was installed successfully and the end goal reached: First Monthly Mix of 2008 created on the iMac (will be published tomorrow). Now, learning OpenOffice is another story. If you just want to write a few paragraphs, no problem. If you use table formatting to create CD covers, it can take a while to get back up to speed.

2. Browsing the internet is still a challenge. I found Safari pretty slow and also found that it kept timing out with images showing up mostly as question marks. I decided to try Firefox instead and it seems to be slightly better. However, page load times and download speeds are still sub-par. I am beginning to suspect 1 of 2 things. Either the Netgear router we have has compatibility issues with OS X, or there is some sort of bandwidth/connection limit that we are hitting now that we have our Tivo, printer, stereo, 2 laptops and 1 desktop connected to our wireless network. The latter theory is doubtful because the iMac seems to be the only device with issues at the moment. I am thinking it is a compatibility issue.

3. It took me 2 weeks to find right click. Mac forums are about to become a regular reading site in my day to day life. After I read the right post, I realize I should have found this in about 10 minutes. No one to blame hear but myself. There are other keyboard shortcuts that have yet o reveal themselves but I am patient.

4. Monthly Mix: I needed to burn audio CD's without using iTunes because the man thinks I am trying to steal music if I burn more than 6 or so CD's and iTunes blocks my play lists. After searching for a while, it appears that no audio burning software (other than iTunes) comes default installed so I found SimplyBurns. It has worked great. A bunch of copies of the opening mix of 2008 were made tonight and are now getting ready for distribution.

5. Digital Photos: I was able to get our Digital Rebel XTi hooked up no problem and download photos on the first try. For Christmas, I bought Carlee a Nikon Coolpix S51 so that we could have a small digital camera convenient for everyday and travel use. It is starting to look like it may no be compatabile with OS X 10.5.1 yet...but I gave up after about 30 minutes of searching online. Verdict is still out.

All in all, I find these challenges interesting and am not really frustrated, but I am a little surprised by my slow learning curve. I recognize that I am just an old dog with tons of old tricks to relearn.