April 2012 From the Prez

April, 2012

Greetings GMMUG-

I spent quite a bit of time this weekend doing some cleanup around the computers we have.. My word, I have to say that I have what i consider to be a ridiculous quantity of Mac paraphernalia. I won’t pretend to claim I have even a fraction of what Jesse has accumulated over the years, and I expect I’d be a distant third place behind Mark McKenney too, but there’s a lot of stuff around here.

I just need to interject here, the dust! Oh my word, the dust! Unbelievable! I can’t believe the house hasn’t caught fire with all the dust that had accumulated behind the machines!

In addition to Macs I’ve purposefully collected over the years, I seem to have accumulated an unbelievable collection of nonfunctional Macs and parts. There’s a G5 PowerMac, at least 2 G5 iMacs (I’m sorry but seems like anything Apple made with a G5 chip was sadly lacking in reliability – in spite of the fact that I have 2 of the original 2 GHz G5 towers still in use), several old all-in-one Macs, including a Classic, an SE, a Classic II, some older iMacs, including a tray-loading "strawberry" iMac, and a slot loading blueberry one, a 14" iBook G4..

Parts? *sigh*.. Uncountable video cards and RAM sticks, cables, hard drives, keyboards and mice, etc..

Then Macs that I believe are fully functional. Let’s see.. An original Macintosh (not the very first; this one says "Macintosh 128k" on the back, which means it was released when Apple was selling the "Fat Mac"); A PowerBook 180c; a Macintosh SE "FDHD"; a Quadra 840 AV; a Newton 2100 with all the accessories; a PowerMac 6500/350; a PowerMac 7300 that is maxed on RAM and has a G4 800 MHz CPU upgrade; 2 PowerMac 9600s, both with CPU upgrades, video card upgrades – one with a VooDoo 5 5500 video card – and exotic fast SCSI RAID setups; 3 beige G3s, all of which are upgraded to some extent; a "Kanga" PowerBook with all the bells and whistles; a loaded "Pismo" PowerBook (550 MHz G4, DVD burner, maximum RAM, upgraded hard drive).. Then there’s the ones that are plugged in and in regular use – My Mac Pro; another Mac Pro I just acquired for the kids to use; one of the aforementioned G5 towers; my trusty old "Digital Audio" G4 tower with a very spendy – and speedy – dual 1.8 GHz Sonnet CPU upgrade, GeForce 4 video card, and many other goodies, just for OS 9 stuff; a Macintosh SE FDHD that I start up once in a while; an old Intel iMac in the kitchen (new enough to run Lion); and my wife’s 13" MacBook Pro.

I like all the Macs in the house that are in common use – but I have to say that my early Mac history is nothing I’m proud of.. First was a Mac Classic – a 68000 8 MHz machine in an era when Macs were using 68020 chips; then 2 Performas, a 6300 and a 6320 in fairly rapid succession, purchased at Sears, no less (both are commonly referred to as "road apples"). Then I got smarter, and bought a Beige G3 PowerMac. Nice machine; I used it for a long time, upgraded it many times, and eventually it found its way to Katy. Then the Digital Audio G4 tower, followed by one of the aforementioned G5 towers. And so on. Just as an aside, I’ve also owned many different Mac laptops, but the ONLY ones ever purchased new were Jennifer’s 12" iBook G3 and her MacBook Pro.

Now I also have an iPad, an AppleTV, and an iPhone. And I enjoy using all my Apple gadgets.

Bix has mentioned this before, and I think it would be great to hear what others have gone through over the years – yes, even before their first Apple computer! Give us a couple paragraphs – maybe Bix can collect a few and we can include them in one newsletter in a couple months.

Before I wrap up, I want to say Thank You to John Bruce for his presentation at our last meeting. I think it’s above and beyond the call of duty for John to offer the Photoshop Elements classes to our members at no charge! Thanks, John!

Q&A is next up, and different backup strategies is on tap for the third Monday, by Yours Truly.

Andrew