| The Long and Winding RoadMike ButlerI love Macs. I hate Macs. The love-hate affair began in the early 90s, when I
bought my first computer -- an original LC.
It had a 13-inch color monitor, 4 MB of RAM, and an 80 MB
hard disk. I thought, "How in the world would you ever fill
that up?" I stayed up all night playing with it, installing
applications, games, utilities, fiddling with the
microphone, and trying to figure out the quaint Font/DA
Mover. I could hardly believe I was actually computing with
the thing barely out of the box! Several months later, in a survival move, Apple
drastically dropped prices on its home computers. When I
bought the LC, it was Apple's lowest-cost color Mac. Now it
was obsolete. I was making monthly payments on a $3,000
cutting board. Had I waited a few months, I could have
bought a II-something for under $2,000, gotten a faster
processor, and had more RAM. Still, the LC served me and my kids well for many years.
I marveled at System 7, racked up 6,000-plus scores on
Klondike, played Tetris for hours, and occasionally wrote a
story or two. I finally switched to a used IIcx
just so I could run a  CD-ROM
drive, which the LC wouldn't support.* But the power supply
to my upgraded CPU went kablooey immediately after I bought
it. The IIci I got after that
has never given me any trouble. - * There's a persistent rumor that the LC and possibly
LC II won't support CD-ROM. It's nonsense; even a Mac
Plus can use a CD-ROM drive.
Somehow, I managed to sidestep other Road
Apples, like the LC II
and the Color Classic.
But you can't let your guard down. Not along ago, I acquired
an early Power Mac without being aware of the problems
associated with the Quadra
800 case. Leave it up to Apple to make a simple box an
accursed lemon. I'm still living and learning, I guess. I've never
purchased a PC and don't intend to. I'll use a Mac as long
as I can, but because of that unhappy first marriage, I'm
not going to pay retail. My First Macintosh- Macs get the job done, Todd H. Cheong,
4/11/2000
- Complete PC nut goes Mac, Fred Forney,
3/29/2000
- The compelling Mac, Sean C. Cunningham,
3/21/2000
- Under my skin, Katherine (BondiBlue2),
3/14/2000
- A rescued Fat Mac, Jonathan Wise,
3/6/2000
- A boy and his Mac, Glenn Dawes,
3/1/2000
- Absolutely essential, Hans
Echterbecker, 2/22/2000
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