All change takes work, switching computers is not easy. To avoid leaving it cheap, I decided to test a Mac this time, an iMac.

It has been three days since the exchange and I am still recovering. The keyboard shortcuts are bothering me, but some are already helping with daily tasks. Here’s a bit of history:

To get my revenge from Windows, I installed Ubuntu 8.04 with Wubi… that installs Ubuntu on the NTFS partition. The funniest thing was to read Ubuntu below Microsoft Windows in the same boot utility of Microsoft, priceless. But the bug doesn’t like my PC, or my PC doesn’t like any operating system. The printer stopped working on Windows after I installed the video camera… I can’t reinstall it even with a prayer. The scanner went along, cursed integrated driver. Unfortunately, I have many registered programs in Windows, better leave them as they are and install the printer on another computer. The way is to believe in Wubi and continue with the installation.

In revenge, Ubuntu and my old Gentoo machine decided to combine not working with my video card. Even functions, but stalls. Funny that XP on the same machine doesn’t print anymore, but I don’t remember the last time it stalled. I discovered that having an AMD 64x2 with an ATI graphics card is wanting to have problems with Linux and X. Ubuntu even tries, installs everything. It recognized the printer that didn’t work on Windows… even the scanner worked after the driver!!! But the computer continues to stall. Thousands of forum posts later, my Linux is still unstable… (noapic, nolapic, irqpool and acpi=force have already been tried in various combinations). Hard is explaining to my daughter that Linux stalls and XP doesn’t…

Back to the Mac, I’m still fighting with cmd and control keys. This business of windows Highlander, which doesn’t die when closed is leaving me nervous. Home and End are also giving me a hard time… cmd + <- and cmd + -> !!! Of course, I’m still pressing the same keys that only bother me… later I tried ctrl + <- and ctrl + ->.

But not everything is bad… I call my Mac guru on duty, my best friend who lives in another time zone… just 6 hours apart :-). Enough time to be knocked out by the Mac… hell, I can’t create zips… Skype attack and voilà! I discover that a Finder menu does the trick… but it’s activated with the right mouse button. Need to say that my mouse doesn’t have one and that the ball also spins sideways? Okay, fight with the mouse… seems like I’ve never used computer in my life :-)

I received a list of software from my Mac-Guru-friend to SCP, torrent (legal, of course) and system improvements. Now I have panels that tell everything about the machine… it looks like the control panel of a spaceship. To test the torrent, I downloaded “Cult of Mac” and believe me, the seed was done by the editor itself No Starch Press (link). Worse than the link goes to The Pirate Bay… damn Safari, brought The Pirate Bay in Dutch… Zoek Torrents? Download deze torrent!!! Now I’m feeling really old, having problems with my new computer and seeing an editor distributing a book via torrent and on The Pirate Bay! Hope it works out, because in the end I’ll buy the printed version anyway, reading on the computer is still hard for me. I open the PDF and hate the book, saved some euros with that download.

And the saga continues… Apple’s tutorial tells me to copy my music from iTunes library on Windows to my Mac, of course using an iPod. The problem is that I don’t have one! Google it and find a tutorial exporting the library and editing the xml… ah must be the Unix part of the experience :-)

10 x 0 for iMac… and I start looking for til on keyboard… discover it doesn’t have one. To make things worse, I bought a Belgian keyboard, because I’m used to that AZERTY thing now. The til is alt + n … later you type space for til or “a” or “o” for ã or õ. All good so far. But I discover soon that I don’t have access to the accents of Portuguese… e and ç are easy, but á is the supreme challenge, doesn’t exist… remember Windows days… copying characters from character map… Found a keyboard editor and made a Belgian-Portuguese layout… now it’s okay. Safari didn’t like the new keyboard, but it’s working really well now.

After 3 days of crusade… I think it was the best money I ever spent on computer. Really good stuff. The shock of change is inevitable, but it pays off. Tio Jobs works hard and makes better machines still.