Note: This is a “best practices” for making a relatively low-cost investment work for someone without much computer skill. This was originally a forum post from January 2006.

I bought a used iBook 900 from Techrestore to configure and give to my dad to replace a heinous Windows/Dell 500 Mhz.

So what did I do? I put Tiger on the iBook, along with Firefox 1.5; removed all dock icons except the absolute necessary ones: Finder, Firefox (renamed “The Internet”), Dashboard, iCal, Home, Trash. I made an account for me and a non-admin account for him. I put only his regular 5 or 6 toolbar bookmarks in Firefox. In a stab at SteveG I left FF’s default toolbar BBC RSS news aggregator dropdown .

I set Firefox to open new windows as tabs to keep things organized.

In addition, I installed the wonderful FF extension AdBlock and imported a pre-made list of ads to block, like this one, which saves much bandwidth, a crucial thing for dialup users like my dad.

Dashboard widgets were installed and configured to his tastes (FOX sports ticker, calculator, weather, stocks). Software Update was set to Never Check for updates.

Then I set up Internet Connect to connect automatically after Firefox is launched and finds no connection, with dialing sounds turned on. Firefox is set to launch on login, so all he does is turn on the Mac and he should be looking at the Internet in a minute. I have him simply Shut Down after each session.

The dialup techno-screeching is awful but handy for diagnosis. In testing on site, the auto dialup worked about half the time. The other half’s failure was due to the connection taking longer than Firefox’s wait for a connection. In that case my dad’s instructed to click the “phone icon in the menu, at the top” and select Connect. He has no problem with this.

I delivered it to him with my old iMac 233’s keyboard (he’s not a pro typer, and finds laptop keyboards to be too small) and an optical Apple one button mouse, which in the strange flavor of a True Reality Inversionâ„¢, is considered by him to be an upgrade from an optical two-button mouse.

He’s not slow, just slow with computers. The Dell was his first ever, and I got that to him over the summer. It’s working so far for him, and on delivery of the iBook he seemed and stated he was much more comfortable.

My buddy at work is a Sony fanatic, and he’s always on the very positive end of the Outcome Possibility Curve™ for the PS3, so I’ve been keeping an eye on news to get a balanced scoop.

I’ve been guessing — even with the news (see below) — that Sony’s replacement to the wildly popular PS2 game console would come in close to Xbox price. I think Sony knows a $600 price tag would be a disaster, especially with the next Nintendo device already slated to appear under Xbox’s price.

At first the PS3 was certain to debut just after Xmas 2005, six months ago. But you know how these things are: delicate balances between expectations, features, and competitor intimidation.

Then it was Spring 2006. Then about two weeks ago I read a September 2006 launch was likely. Now news that the launch may be as far away as 2007 in the US.

Let’s look back at the current Xbox’s development for a minute. With this latetes PS3 delay news firmly in our data buffers, it’s clear one thing that MS did right was learn from their experience developing software. To get out Xbox II (”Xbox 360″), they knew they could fart around (add features) or they could get it out before PS3. They got down to business and got the thing out, hitting the Xmas 2005 target even.

Farting around would have probably seen a next-gen HD DVD drive incorporated into the 360, and would have seen it match the PS3 in horsepower, for bragging rights if nothing else. Also, MS passed up matching PS3’s 1080p video signal, settling for 1080i.

IMHO Sony’s plan to cram in a little bit more into their console than their competitor was risky. Hindsight is 20-20, but adding an unreleased technology — like say something as massive as The Next Home Movie Format — should set off alarm bells in anyone’s head. Now, it looks as if that decision could really hurt Sony because it’s still changing.

Big players in the arena are still making changes in the anti-backup OOOPS I mean anti-piracy used in Blu-ray

All MS’s non-farting around worked. I think the team was focused, and the results are tangible.

A bird in the hand…

So there’s these things called “TV shows” on iTunes Music Store, synchronized combinations of sound and video not unlike the very addictive, very free Google Video, except not free.

That’s right: you can now watch what Neanderthals watched without actually having to get and power one of those Neanderthal machines callled “a television.” And in 100% unNeanderthal style, you won’t have to watch 1 second of ads.

Ok I’ll ditch the caveman comparisons and cut to the chase: TV via iTMS works. And rumor has it it’s actually adding to shows’ bottom line, not cannibalizing it.

iTunes being the 900-pound gorilla that it is (~70% downloadable, legal music market share), Apple reasoned if music works, why not television shows?

As with most things digital, the devil is in the details. And in the case of TV via iTMS, the details are pretty ironed out because the show — The Office, “Booze Cruise” — was easily located and purchased.

Download went quickly over Comcrust cable internet access, and the $1.99 show was mine within a minute or two.

There were two issues, one being a forced-upgrade issue with iTunes app and Apple that I’ve written about before, and that forced this whole procedure onto my wife’s iTunes 6.x PowerBook. The other was a grey screen during playback of the show.

The other issue was quickly solved by upgrading Quicktime from 7.0 to 7.0.4 (I think. The download page isn’t being friendly about what version it’s serving up.)

I’ve got a site called AppleSwitcher, but I’ve never switched. Odd? Not really. I just never went down the PC road.

My first computer was a Commodore 64 (if you like C64 games, go here and start playing now). That was in 1984 or so, and I used it for a few years.

Fast forward over a few years of computerlessness until 1991, when I asked a college professor for advice on what type of computer to get to perform paper-writing duties. She asked me if I liked “graphics.” Of course I liked graphics. I was a college paper photographer, and as such had seen The Most Amazing Machine — in the school paper newsroom no less — in the form of a dedicated AP news photo PC with a screen that paged through the latest AP photos from around the globe. That machine was really exciting, heady stuff for pre-Web days.

The choice I asked the professor for help on, as if you need a clue on this, was of course between an Apple Mac and a PC. At the time I was using IBM PCs running Windows 3.1 in college computer labs. It wasn’t hard to have a violent dislike for the networked 16MHz PC clones. Much of the class time was spent getting students from point A to point B in the Windows OS… the cold, unforgiving 16-color Windows 3.1 world.

My professor recommended a Mac, and I immediately set to reading every Macuser and Macworld magazine in existence. I could feel that a Mac was far and away the best decision.

In the winter of 1991-92 I bought a Mac LC, matching Apple 12″ monitor, and original Stylewriter printer from Lewan and Associates on Colorado Boulevard in Denver, Colorado. It took a good 2-4 weeks for them to get it for some reason.

There wasn’t much I could do about the waiting; there were no alternatives like CompUSA or Apple Store. Macs — and any real computers back then — were just not nearly as popular as they are now, and thus places that sold them were few.

The several weeks of waiting felt like forever of course. When it was delivered I poured over it for weeks discovering this “System 7″ thing, and a long line of Macs has followed since.

Postscript

I owned a Dell laptop, but gave it to my dad about a year ago, so I don’t technically own a PC right now. But I use one at work, and have used them at my jobs more often than not in the last 6 years.