A postscript to the old mouse story.
A while back, I wrote a brief post about my friend Jo at KBSZ-AM and the circa 1989 mouse she was using on her circa 1989 Mac IIci. Oddly enough, the post was well received, Dugg over 1,000 times, and nearly caused me to have my hosting account cancelled. So it is with great caution that I add the postscript to Jo’s story.
A few weeks ago, Jo mentioned that her keyboard had stopped working. She didn’t actually ask for a keyboard — which is unfortunate, because I’m sure I have an old ADB keyboard floating around here — so I figured she’d gotten the problem resolved on her own.
She did. She bought a new Mac.
I saw it when I stopped by the radio station today to check some things on the steaming audio server I set up for them. It was sitting on her desk where the old IIci used to sit. There was a single piece of paper covering the keyboard to keep dust off it.
The “new” computer was a Bondi Blue iMac — the original iMac model.
“Welcome to the 1990s,” I said when I saw it.
The local Mac fix-it guy had sold it to her for $50. He charged her another $35 for the keyboard. (Unfortunate, because she could have used the keyboard connected to the eMac that the streaming audio software runs on and saved the $35.) While he was at it, he sold her a “new” printer, too.
(What’s really unfortunate is that there’s a Strawberry iMac sitting on the floor of my garage, waiting for me to restore the hard disk to factory settings and put it on eBay. I would have been just as happy giving it to her. I think it’ll run Mac OS 9.2. That would have saved her total of $85. But then I would have become the support person, like I am for my neighbor’s kids, recipients of my old iBook SE. When will I learn?)
Jo fired it up the iMac for me. I noticed the startup screen. It was running Mac OS 9.2. The desktop pattern was that icky blue/green wavy pattern that was part of pre-Mac OS X systems. She told me how much she liked those colors and was very pleased to see them on her desktop.
Then she fired up PageMaker (version 3?), which she uses to keep her “ledger.” (Remember, she does all the accounting for the radio station on her Mac. Apparently, she doesn’t use accounting software or Excel.) She pointed out the icons in the bottom of the PageMaker window, the ones that represent document pages. She told me that when she first opened her 17-page ledger, there was something on the screen (Launcher, perhaps?) that hid the page buttons. She was afraid to click the thing blocking the buttons. But the Mac Fix-it guy, bless him, told her how to make that go away.
She seemed very happy. It was a major step for her. After 18 years with the same computer, she’d upgraded. And the new one was only about 8 years old.
As she shut it down, she turned to me and smiled. “The printer’s a little quicker, too.”
