After six days of using my new iMac I must say that I am quite impressed. The complaints regarding the new keyboard that I have read about are unfounded in my view. I like the feel and response of the key action; the keyboard is solid without being bulky and quite adequately accommodates my large paws. I am least fond of the mouse, particularly the tiny ball for scrolling. The short cables to attach both mouse and keyboard are a bother as well. While I have experienced some issues with reflections on the screen under certain conditions, I have been able to control the background light source to minimize the reflections; I’ve also become more accustomed to the display and notice the reflections less and less. I read several complaints regarding incorrect color rendering accompanied by suggestions to recalibrate the display. I followed those suggestions; however, I am not a graphic artist with exacting standards as well as not having an eye for subtle nuances of color representation: my display seems just fine although moving from a 17 inch CRT to a 20 inch iMac is daunting.
On day four I received a scare. I finally got around to playing a DVD and was dismayed to discover that Spiderman 2 just made DVD Player heave. After playing Spidey without a hitch on my G4 iBook I gave Apple a call. When the Apple rep answered I suspected I had been connected to a call center in India, maybe it was the Bollywood theme music playing in the background each time he put me on hold that was the source of my suspicions. After a short exchange, the tech decided that my call should be transferred to a DVD specialist and three minutes later I was chatting with someone back in the US. Both techs were nice –I’d like to think that this was standard procedure and not a result of my having purchased Apple Care with my iMac. I especially appreciated the first tech’s decision to turn the support call over to someone who could help me right away rather than waste time exploring dead ends. When all attempts at rectifying my problem failed, I was told that I would have to do an archive and install in order to determine if I had a hardware problem or if the culprit was software oriented. I was given a case number and the telephone number of the nearest Apple certified repair center if reinstalling the OS did not correct the problem. Once the process was underway the Apple tech hung up as reinstalling the OS would take around a half hour or so. I breathed a sigh of relief about an hour later when the famed web slinger swung across my screen.
Day five VMware Fusion arrived. I had hoped to do a clean install of XP; however, I encountered difficulty using my my upgrade version of XP. I had already slipstreamed my original disc to include SP2 but, just as I had read in other accounts, I was unable to swap my Win 98 install disc to continue the XP install. I removed the file created by the aborted installation of XP and proceeded to install Windows 98SE from my full stand alone version (yes, all of my software is legal, authorized, and bought and paid for). Once I had installed Win 98 I upgraded to XP Home using the slipstreamed disc I had prepared earlier. When the installation of XP completed I began the still lengthy process of downloading security updates. Actually, I installed anti-virus and malware software before downloading the security updates. So far everything works reasonably well although VMware Fusion needs better documentation to make its installation and use more transparent. Were it not for the abominable support of Quicken on the Mac I would not have bothered to install Windows on my new Mac; however, I was unwilling to lose 15+ years of data I had accumulated while using Windows. It is still surreal seeing this on a Mac.
