In 1978 I purchased an Apple II, dual floppies, and 48K of memory. Besides, the $2400 I spent for it and how much fun it was to have a computer, the thing I remember most clearly was coming back to work from lunch one day and hearing a fellow employee say, "Oh by the way one of your son's called." What did he say, I asked. "Oh he just wanted to know how to spell delete." Sometime in February of 1984 I became the proud owner of an 128K Macintosh another $2000 plus. A year later I spent $1000 for one megabyte of memory. I must have underestimated the impact that purchase had on me because to this day I often say megabytes when I mean Gigabytes. I'm living an order of magnitude in the past I suppose. During the eighties, I was playing a lot of chess. The chess software I wanted ran only on a PC so reluctantly I switched. Had I known then what I know now, I would have stayed with my first love. Although my chess improved I never reached the level I had hoped I would. Oh, I knocked off an occasional Master, but a lack of consistency in my ability to calculate accurately destined me to be a lover of the game, but alas not a master of the game. The past several years I've been trying to convince myself it would be a good idea to switch back to a Mac. I've grown tired of the daily security updates, the blue screens, but to be honest I never came up with a truly convincing argument (one a wife would buy without a ... ), one that would justify the expense and effort to make the change. Although my reasons are a little thin, I don't care, I've done it. A shiny new Imac 800mhz G4, 17 inch flat panel display, SuperDrive arrived today. I took the day off. Transferring files is taking longer than I expected. The Mac won't recognize the CDs the PC is burning. I thought perhaps the Mac was just being fussy, but my son's PC won't recognize them either. Go figure. I understand it's simple to hook these new Macs to a PC network so tomorrow I'll make a cable and hook it to the PC networkthat is if I can figure it out. I've noticed in recent years that the learning curve keeps getting longer, but I haven't forgotten the key, RTFM. I mentioned to Jonathan a month or two ago that I was considering making the change. He suggested that I install Linux on my PC instead and stay the course. Excellent advice graciously given, but that he were so generous with his Tim Tams, oops forget I mentioned the Tim Tams unless you too have desired them, but gone unfulfilled. It is not too late to enter this contest, no entry fee, Tim Tams or books as prizes. I'm happy this computer is awesome, the display alone was worth the switch. I've been paying more attention recently to which bloggers are using Mac's, and maybe I can impose upon them for some help from time to time. Goodbye Microsoft, can't say I'll miss you, particularly that heartache you call an operating system.