Moving to MacIntel
I hadn’t planned on moving to a MacIntel desktop until next year, not only to save money and get ahead of my credit cards more before I put anything major on them but to wait until Adobe had their software packages out. But life has a way of taking you places on its terms instead of yours.
My daughter-in-law, Emily, has been using a 700 MHz G4 flat panel iMac for some time now and has been very happy with it…until recently. Her dissatisfaction with it started when she bought a new 5G iPod (commonly known as an iPod Video). The “sunflower” iMac only has USB 1.1 ports on it, and her download times to the iPod are painfully slow. Her husband, Tim, and I discussed some various solutions to the problem but he and Emily had apparently been talking about getting a new Mac.
Within the last few weeks, my resistance to buying an Intel iMac had been breaking down. I really want to crank up my flight simulators to work on getting both current and proficient as an Instrument Flight Rules pilot, and I had felt a 20 inch iMac was the perfect flight simulator. I also use Paperport software to electronically file lots of papers, and it would be a little nice to just dual boot the machine I work on all the time rather than booting a separate machine. Still, because of the imminent release of the MacBooks and because I wanted more time before dealing with an Intel move, I had no immediate plans of moving to Intel-powered iMac territory. Then, I talked to Tim and mentioned that I had been looking at trading my current iMac in on a new one. From there, we moved to a discussion of selling it, and Tim thought he and Emily might be interested in buying it.
He talked it with Emily and they decided they wanted to do that, so I ordered a refurbished 20 inch Core Duo iMac from the Apple Store. It will arrive about mid-week. I also ordered a 1 GIG memory upgrade from Crucial and a copy of XP Pro from NewEgg. My plan is to transfer all my stuff over to the Intel Mac using Apple’s Migration Assistant and then use it for a week or so before backing it up and loading BootCamp and XP Pro.
There are lots of minefields to navigate. Before I transfer anything, I need to remember to transfer activation on all my Adobe CS applications and to deauthorize my current machine’s iTunes account. I’m covering the expected performance hits and instabilities of my Adobe apps by loading up my dual G5 PowerMac with all my Adobe applications and by setting up a network shared drive that holds all my Adobe files so I can access them from either the iMac or the PowerMac. I’ve also moved some Word files to the shared drive for the same reason and have Office loaded on the PowerMac as well, even though I do not expect the same level of performance drop from it as the Adobe apps.
I’m fairly familiar with my applications and know that most of them will run under Rosetta. Last night, I realized I had no idea whether MT-NewsWatcher will run under Rosetta or not. Corel Draw 11 is also an unknown, though I can run it under Windows for sure, so I won’t lose it entirely if it doesn’t run. I’m going to need to update my copy of Final Draft, Toast, and Quicken when the latter two are available.
I’m expecting a bunch of hassles. On the plus side, I’ll have plenty to write about in this blog. Stay tuned.
My daughter-in-law, Emily, has been using a 700 MHz G4 flat panel iMac for some time now and has been very happy with it…until recently. Her dissatisfaction with it started when she bought a new 5G iPod (commonly known as an iPod Video). The “sunflower” iMac only has USB 1.1 ports on it, and her download times to the iPod are painfully slow. Her husband, Tim, and I discussed some various solutions to the problem but he and Emily had apparently been talking about getting a new Mac.
Within the last few weeks, my resistance to buying an Intel iMac had been breaking down. I really want to crank up my flight simulators to work on getting both current and proficient as an Instrument Flight Rules pilot, and I had felt a 20 inch iMac was the perfect flight simulator. I also use Paperport software to electronically file lots of papers, and it would be a little nice to just dual boot the machine I work on all the time rather than booting a separate machine. Still, because of the imminent release of the MacBooks and because I wanted more time before dealing with an Intel move, I had no immediate plans of moving to Intel-powered iMac territory. Then, I talked to Tim and mentioned that I had been looking at trading my current iMac in on a new one. From there, we moved to a discussion of selling it, and Tim thought he and Emily might be interested in buying it.
He talked it with Emily and they decided they wanted to do that, so I ordered a refurbished 20 inch Core Duo iMac from the Apple Store. It will arrive about mid-week. I also ordered a 1 GIG memory upgrade from Crucial and a copy of XP Pro from NewEgg. My plan is to transfer all my stuff over to the Intel Mac using Apple’s Migration Assistant and then use it for a week or so before backing it up and loading BootCamp and XP Pro.
There are lots of minefields to navigate. Before I transfer anything, I need to remember to transfer activation on all my Adobe CS applications and to deauthorize my current machine’s iTunes account. I’m covering the expected performance hits and instabilities of my Adobe apps by loading up my dual G5 PowerMac with all my Adobe applications and by setting up a network shared drive that holds all my Adobe files so I can access them from either the iMac or the PowerMac. I’ve also moved some Word files to the shared drive for the same reason and have Office loaded on the PowerMac as well, even though I do not expect the same level of performance drop from it as the Adobe apps.
I’m fairly familiar with my applications and know that most of them will run under Rosetta. Last night, I realized I had no idea whether MT-NewsWatcher will run under Rosetta or not. Corel Draw 11 is also an unknown, though I can run it under Windows for sure, so I won’t lose it entirely if it doesn’t run. I’m going to need to update my copy of Final Draft, Toast, and Quicken when the latter two are available.
I’m expecting a bunch of hassles. On the plus side, I’ll have plenty to write about in this blog. Stay tuned.
posted by Andy Foster at
6:06 AM
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