I have moved — or backed-up — most of my files (the bulk of these are video clips, mp3s, photos and the gzipped copies of the Timog Forum database). This wouldn’t have taken too much time but I waited until the last minute to get an external hard disk for the iMac.
These 1- and 2-terabyte hard disks at the computer store were tempting, but one look at their price made me slink back to another corner where the more reasonably-priced megabyte-sized hard disks were located. I chose the cheapest one: a 250MB Buffalo drive for about 12,000 yen. The drive taken home and files finally moved from the Dimension to the iMac; a mop-up operation over the weekend will clean up the old computer for selling (I already have an enthusiastic buyer actually). Almost 10 years of using a Windows machine at home will come to an end, although I will still use PCs at work (a Japanese Mac Ad, watch out for the sound).
(Rough translation of the Japanese Mac Ad:
PC: Hello, I’m a PC.
Mac: Hello, I’m a Mac.
PC: Hey, aren’t you a PC, too?
Mac: Yeah, but people usually call me “Mac”.
PC: So, you’re kinda special right? Like a friend.
Mac: People usually use me in the privacy of their homes, so maybe I’m easy to get along with.
PC: Right. Well, people usually use me at work… I want a special name, too, like you.
Mac: Well… If you’re mainly used on the job… How about “Waaku” (The Japanese word for “Work”.)
PC: (Pointing to Mac) “Makku” and (pointing to himself) “Waaku”! Cool!
I know this doesn’t sound funny (translations rarely are) but the whole thing is a play on the words “Makku” (meaning “Mac”) and “Waaku” (meaning “work”) and how the PC guy thinks it’s a cool name. At the risk of getting too far off-topic, I like the PC guy better (like I like the PC guy in the English ads better than the Mac guy) and these two comedians (their younger versions) were also in another subtly funny video clip — this one about eating sushi.)
If I sound like it’s my first time using a Mac, well, the fact is my first 4 computers were Macs. I have had in succession the Color Classic II, the Performa 630, the LC 588, and the Power Macintosh 6100 Dos Compatible (similar to the one on the left). The this Power Mac was a dual-personality PC, powered by 66MHz PowerPC and 486DX2 chips through which I ran both Kanji Talk 7.5 (the Japanese MacOS 7.5) and Windows 95 in a dual-booting system. It was the only computer I know at that time (or any time since except the current Intel Macs) that could run both MacOS and Windows.
After I sold the Power Mac in the late nineties and while lusting after the PowerWave 150 (a Mac clone), a friend of mine gave me a Pentium 133 chip, I decided to assemble a PC around it and got stuck with Windows for almost 10 years. So in a way, this iMac is a way back to my old computing roots. I hope it will be a good trip.
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