Shannon Stacey


The Mac Anxiety Attack

Yesterday I made a decision—on Saturday morning I’m going to trek down to Best Buy and buy a Macbook. Yay! Very exciting and pondering software kept me busy. Do I want to pay for Office for Mac or take a chance on NeoOffice?

But then, when it was dark and I couldn’t sleep, the anxiety came.

What if I hate it? What if I can’t figure out how to use it? Ohmigod, I’ll have to figure out how to move my iTunes library. But I’ve always used Photosuite to resize pictures. What will I use now? I don’t like change, but I’m considering going from PC to Mac? Am I crazy? Is it really worth $999.00?

What if my love for my iPod Touch is acting as mental Kool-aid and I’m really willing to pay twice as much for a product just because it has a picture of an apple on it?

I have to keep going back to the Apple site and admiring the asthetic beauty of it to calm my nerves. Which then makes me wonder if I only want it because it’s white. And compact.

Dammit. I’ll have to self-medicate before Saturday comes.

11 comments to “The Mac Anxiety Attack”

  1. Carolan Ivey
    Comment
    1
      · January 14th, 2010 at 11:00 am · Link

    Sending emergency chocolate now! :)



  2. Charlene
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    2
      · January 14th, 2010 at 11:03 am · Link

    I loved my little, lightweight Macbook and cried when it died. But you know what, I kill the cheap PC laptops too fast for it to be a bargain in the long run. My Vaio is holding up, but that was only a bargain because I got it on clearance. You kind of do get what you pay for. Bottom line, if you get two or three times the life out of it, it’s worth 2-3X the price. I think you’ll love your Macbook! Once you get past the trauma of change.



  3. dorthy
    Comment
    3
      · January 14th, 2010 at 11:07 am · Link

    you’ll have to keep us posted on how it goes. I’ve thought a couple of times about getting a mac, but the anxiety overwhelms me and I end up staying with my lovely PC.



  4. Shannon
    Comment
    4
      · January 14th, 2010 at 11:09 am · Link

    Thank you, Carolan!

    Life expectancy is an argument I used to convince my husband I wasn’t crazy, but it’s a tough one for me to use. This monster Toshiba laptop is four years old, with no sign of being on its deathbed yet. It has issues and sometimes it makes very odd noises, and there’s the missing key that I don’t use, but visually drives me crazy. The desktop PC is three.

    I’m sure I love it. Really. Honest.

    *devours chocolate*



  5. Shannon
    Comment
    5
      · January 14th, 2010 at 11:10 am · Link

    Dorthy, it’s a daunting change, but I’ll keep y’all posted. Jaci loved hers almost immediately and we have similar usage and techno abilities, so I should love mine, too. I hope. :lol:



  6. Jaci Burton
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    6
      · January 14th, 2010 at 11:17 am · Link

    I’m rolling my eyes at you. See? :roll:

    You’re going to laugh at yourself when you see how easy it is to enter the Mac world. I’m the most techno challenged person on the planet, and I was up and running Day 1 with no problem. Sure you’ll have a few questions about where things are. But you have me and Angie and Mandy to help you through. Feel free to call me this weekend if you need to know anything.

    You’re going to LOVE being a Mac owner. Trust me. Especially when nothing crashes and you don’t have to load and run that moronic virus software. :grin:



  7. Shannon
    Comment
    7
      · January 14th, 2010 at 11:29 am · Link

    They want $150 for Office at Best Buy, but $107 isn’t bad. I guess the thing to do is get it home and get comfortable with it before figuring out if I want to mess with open source or if I want a commercial product.

    And I play with the Macbook at Best Buy every time I go in. :lol:

    I’ll have to look at Scrivener again. It’s looks very cool—especially the corkboard, which I want desperately—but it also mentioned something about it not offering page layout and stuff until you exported it. I’m very much about white space and the look of the words on the page, so that might be a drawback. I need to go back to the site and look at the screenshots.

    At least having the desktop PC in the house takes the edge off the panic, a little. I can resize pics on it and even do edits on it if I have to, until I figure out what I want on the Mac.



  8. Jean
    Comment
    8
      · January 14th, 2010 at 11:12 am · Link

    When you go to Best Buy, USE the MacBook on display. Open programs. Wander around. I’ve always seen Best Buy people helping people with the display, so if you get stuck, have them show you how to use that new-fangled trackpad thingie (which is supposed to be cook, but I haven’t figured out yet, because I haven’t tried). I played with Macs for a few minutes for several months before I made the plunge. By the time I did, I was comfortable, and, really, it was easy, but I’d had such a HORRIBLE experience with Macs in the 1980s, that I was very hesitant.

    I recommend picking up the book, “Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Snow Leopard Edition.”

    I have trouble doing several things with it, and there is a small learning curve, but there are so many people who have gone before you that a quick post will usually get you a quick answer and have you on your way. I like iPhoto, but I can’t really figure out how to resize or do much photo editing yet. I think I need another program but haven’t looked into it yet.

    I doubt you’re really interested in this product just for the picture of the Apple on it. It’s cool but just not that cool when it’s your tool for work.

    You can take a chance on NeoOffice or Open Office and if it doesn’t work out, you can ALWAYS buy Office for Mac — get the home and student edition ($107 on Amazon), it’s all you need, so it’s not *that* expensive. Scrivener is the cool tool you want, and THAT is worth buying the Mac to use — whether it’s $999 or $2549.



  9. Jean
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    9
      · January 14th, 2010 at 11:22 am · Link

    What Jaci said.



  10. Jean
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    10
      · January 14th, 2010 at 12:26 pm · Link

    The cool thing about Scrivener is the 30-day free trial. Wander around the site. Check out the tutorials. Follow them on Twitter (they give a tip of the day type thing and testimonials). Try it before you buy it.

    We have tons of PCs around the house, so I haven’t had to go cold turkey either. That helps a lot. Don’t rush to buy software for the Mac. The only software I use regularly is Word, Excel, Scrivener, iPhoto, Adium (chat stuff), Things, Firefox, Entourage and/or Mail, Time Machine (comes with Mac — 1 TB external drive for backup), and Solitaire Til Dawn X, I have StuffIt, and I may use that more than I realize — it operates seamlessly. (Word, Excel, and Entourage all come in Office for Mac) iPhoto and Time Machine come with Mac. Firefox and Adium are free downloads, Things. Well, I just LOVE Things, but I use it to implement David Allen’s Getting Things Done and FlyLady’s Control Journal all rolled into one, so your mileage may vary. And you have to have a good solitaire game, don’t you? Solitaire Til Dawn lives up to it’s name. Scrivener and Solitaire Til Dawn are low cost try before you buy software you download.

    Application installation is a little odd, but you’ll love it once you do it. It’s a simple drag and drop of an icon to the Application Folder (or wherever you want it to install)



  11. Annmarie
    Comment
    11
      · January 14th, 2010 at 5:33 pm · Link

    I adore my mac. LOVE it SO much!

    I bought the office for mac. There is only so much change I can take.







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