Technology

I took the plunge. The iMac G5.

For weeks if not months I have been visiting a couple of different Apple stores in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, looking at all the new toys. I was in need of another computer and fell in love with the new Apples.

I started out many moons ago on the old “SE”. The “SE” machine had a whopping 20 meg. hard drive and a grayscale display monitor. Then I graduated to the Power PC6100. Wow, I had color! Then many years rolled by in “computer years” that is, and customers were getting all these new Microsoft Windows machines. I thought it would probably be a good idea for me to learn about these. So I did my investigative market research and found a PC at one of the malls. All of a sudden it seemed as though the whole world was getting on the bandwagon.

As timed rolled on, family members wanted computers. I was not about to pay what I felt was a huge markup on the computers at the various outlets, so I dove into learning about the insides of PCs and built one. Then I needed a Linux system and built another PC. A short while later it was time for another family member to have one and pulling the same rabbit out of the hat again, I went down to the local Fry’s and looked at all the motherboards and picked what I felt would be the best investment. In addition I picked up a hard drive, memory, CD, DVD player, and a monitor. This one had a little hitch though. The motherboard would not boot. No problem though, just a little time and patience. Took the board back and got another. This time it booted up like a champ.

Now I am coming round, full circle. I had really loved the Mac when I first had them, but because of time moving on, I really lost touch with the machine I loved.

A friend had recently purchased a PowerBook and had been a fan of Apple for as long as Apple has been around. He is an older gentleman that really took to the Mac. As I had been comparing the differences between the PowerBook vs the PC, I was realizing what a wonderful difference existed between the two. I discovered there was a whole other world that I was missing.

So, I took the leap. When I went into the Apple store, and I had intended to purchase the Mini; which is really a neat little machine, but I needed more horsepower, and most importantly I needed a larger display with more real estate desktop space. I could have purchased the Mac mini with a large external display, but by the time I would have added the external display, I could get a better, more powerful machine with the Apple iMac G5 with a 20 inch wide screen display that is simply gorgeous. I picked up the high end model, with Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse, 512 meg. of memory, 160 GB hard drive, and the Slot-load SuperDrive. With just a power plug and hooking up a network cable from my router, I was in fat Apple city.

When I turned it on, it went through its boot up process and Wow! Once again I found the machine I love.

More to come from the Professional Web Services, Internet marketing, online advertising, branding strategies, and Computer Techster.

Technology is changing faster than anyone can stay up with it.
by: James A. Warholic

I remember just like it was yesterday when the first hand held calculators came out into the market place. They were big and bulky with big red LEDs and the batteries would only last for a short time. They only had a rudimentary amount of functions: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

The first one I ever saw was when my sister, a teacher, bought one for what I think was a couple of hundred dollars. I recall the family all getting excited about this technology and wondering where it would lead. We all wanted to try it out. Then with in another year or so the next wave of new and improved calculators were seen in the marketplace. These were the scientific calculators that had more functions but a lot more expensive. It was a long time before I actually saw one of these that someone had purchased.

As I recall, it was a couple of years latter that my Dad had purchased a basic one.

During those early years of the calculators, school kids were still being taught to use slide rules. In fact during that time it was forbidden to even have a calculator at school. The teachers said that students needed to do the higher math functions on paper plus use slide rules.

Now, look at us today. With the advent of high speed throughput heat staking machines (equipment used in assembly process), the manufacturing processes and costs have been reduced dramatically. How times change. Teachers are asking students to go out and purchase scientific calculators for their math assignments and for use in class. The cost of these calculators have dropped in price to just about to the point where anyone can afford it. Not only are they less expensive but their computing power is on the magnitude greater then what a computer could do twenty years ago. Likewise, computers today have more computing power than forty years ago.

Kids today do not have a clue what it is like not to have calculators. Most in the United States have access to computers either at home or at school.

Yep, technology is a changing… And it is pushing and pulling us along.

In light of the Internet, where will we be in another five or ten years?

Above all – Tell it Like it is And Do it With Style!
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