Irish Mac Users, say Hello!

chanchan

This thread is for all the Apple/Mac users in Ireland to come and intorduce themselves...

Feel free to write whatever you like - preferably Apple/Mac related - where you are from, what you do, what mac you have, maybe a few switcher stories, why you love the mac, what was is about windows that made you switch, etc.



As many of you know, there is a huge community spirit behind owning a Mac and hopefully this thread can contribute to that community feeling on Boards.ie.

chanchan

I'll go first.
My name is Stephen. have been using Macs now for 3/4 years... I currently own 2 12-inch PBs and a 15-inch Powerbook.

I work as an accounts manager-in-training.

What attracted me to Macs originally were it's clever design and hugely intuitive OS user interface.

However, even before that, I grew extremely frustrated with the whole windows world... I bought a top-of-the-range Sony vaio, and from all the viruses that i got on a regular basis to all the Malware and Adware that regularly installed itself on my Vaio, i grew extremely disenchanted with computing in general.

For the record, I used ever iteration of windows from 3.1 to xp Professional, these include 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP Home, XP Pro.

I have to admit, there was a time that i enjoyed being a windows user... even its faults did not faze me... i actually enjoyed trouble-shooting... but it got to the stage that I had to actually do some real work and that is when I considered a Mac.

I have never looked back since... I could count the crashes I have on my powerbooks on one hand and there are things I can do on Macs that i never dreamed i could do on windows... like getting some real work done!!

Thumper Long

hi my name is alan and i am a switcher

i have used pc's from pre win95 through to XPpro and everything in between, I even dabbled in the art of redhat and suse linux for a while . Then last august i bought myself a mac, its only a 14 inch iBook but its a G3 900mhz PPC, and running 640 mb's of ram. Its no a bad starter machine, in fact it outperforms my old 2100+ amd with 512 mbs ram. My first experience was with OS X 10.2, it took me about a week to get used to the general layout and operation , i am now runnung 10.3 which is without doubt the best OS in the world until tiger arrives next year. I dont want to sound like a windows basher but compared to apple, microsoft for me has basically disappeared into the abyss. from the design and build quality of the system everything is better. i spend all day working on computers its what i did my degree in and its what ill do my masters on next year, spending so much time with a computer has become so much more pleasurable since i switched. I just cant believe i was in the dark for so long shrouded in ignorance. well thanks to Mr Jobs ive seen the light, its apple shaped and it eminates out from the back of my laptop.

when i finish college for good next year my first purchase will be a fully loaded 15" powerbook that i will treasure.

yours sincerely

TL indebtedtostevejobs

acous

I'm from Galway. My mac is a (measly:P) 12" 800mhz g4 ibook with 640ram, airport extreme and all those doodads. My other computer is an athlon 2800 with 512 ram.

I'm part nerd, part graphic designer. I do my graphics work in photoshop on my PC, the ibook doesn't really have the power to drive 2 screens smoothly with exposé etc. What attracted me to apple was firstly os X (it's so pretty! it's unix! things are layed out logically!), and later the design of their hardware - specifically the laptops.

My first computer was actually an apple II. I got it free from a friend of my parents. it had no software, and there's no cool "i taught myself and programmed a small operating system" story... i just drew ascii pictures of rockets and pressed enter so they 'flew' away . I've also gone through an amiga 500 (much more successful), a 386sx/20 (that's when i figured out windows sucked) and various other x86 machines (p133, p2-333, k6-2 500). Last year i got an old g3 powermac with all kinds of video hardware to play with, and had the use of a friends 15" ti powerbook (400, i think) for a while... i had to have a mac

Operating systems I've tried include: dos, win3.1, 95, 98, 2000pro/server, xp, QNX, BEoS, linux, freebsd, os7/8/9/X.1/.2/.3 (anyone wanna burn me a dvd of the tiger beta?). I hope to get a g5 and some proper audio equipment at some stage so i can mess around with home recording properly.

ps. alan, if your 900mhz g3 outperforms an athlon 2100, theres something wrong with your athlon.

SteveFE

Steve, Co Clare but originally from England.

Used Macs since about 1992; first one a pizza box LC (68020/4MB/40MB), then several variants at work, currently home use of an eMac 1.25GHz/512MB/80GB.

Used them for graphics in the print business, and graduated to writing MIS for the company in Filemaker Pro, at which point I got seriously into networking them (too easy to say got seriously into it really! Nothing like the maze of protocols, dialogs and cryptic error messages you get with Windaz).

Main home use now is audio recording, using SoundStudio for straight-to-stereo live stuff and Ableton Live for multitracking. Occasionally using GarageBand for the bits that require input from the devil called MIDI. Was pleasantly surprised by X's incredibly intuitive and hands-off handling of audio and MIDI over OS9

Remain constantly staggered by the inability of Windies drones to recognise a superior OS when they see it, and their continual bleats about the prices of Mac hardware. FFS, if you want a BMW you don't pay Hyundai money do you?

David Stewart

David Stewart's the name. I got into Macs in 1992 when the office I was working in switched to Macs. I even bought a second hand IICX, which I still have. I upgraded to a Performa 5300 in 1996. I moved back to Ireland in 1997. My current setup is an iMac DV (which is starting to show its age) and a 12" Powerbook G4. I'll probably upgrade to one of the new G5 iMacs but not immediately. I'll wait until OS X 10.4 Tiger is pre-installed.

I've served as Chairman and Secretary of Clubmac, the Irish Macintosh usergroup. I work as a journalist specialising in the technology sector.

babypink

i'm a mac user.....i like macs.....they rule.....

i started out in my mac existence with a Macintosh classic (cool) gotta love the B&W days. Moved from that to the ill fated Powerbook Duo (again the laptop was B&W), i was too poor to afford the colour one. Loved that one, especially when in the duo dock itself, you got the extra hard drive, floppy and graphics card. Still think that the 17' studio monitor i had with that was one of the best apple have ever made, together with the original and still best ADB pro keyboard.

took a bit or a sabbaticle then and am currently languishing with my 600Mhz iBook (white). Have taken that thing around the world and still going strong, all tarted up with Airport, RAM and all the bits. Although i'm quite proud of my new Dual Layer DVD recorder....ooh suits you sir!

OS wise, started with system 6/7 though 9/X/X.1/X.2/X.3 bring on Tiger!!!!
Oh yeah not to mention the DOS's and windows (ahem) pish! brief flirtation with BeOS - that was nice!

Lets hope funds stretch to a new PB sometime soon :-)

ZENER

Ken's the name - Dublin.

I'm a techie and part time student - Oscail DCU.

I started using OS8 on an emulator called Shapeshifter which I ran on an Amiga 4000/040. I was hooked straight away but couldn't afford a Mac at the time. I used PC's (still do to some extent) for about 6 years until I got a part time job that gave me access to all sorts of Mac Goodies. I use Linux too which isn't too far removed from OS X. Panther is the best OS ever, intuitive, fast, safe !

My main Mac is a G4 Quick Silver 1.2GHz - 1GB - 80GB IDE - 73GB SCSI - GeForce 4Ti 4600 128MB - Apple Cinema Display 23" (:D) Panther 10.3.4

I have a G4 AGP 500MHz with 512MB as a server doing Web PHP MySQL and iTunes server (iTunes 4.5 and up allows music sharing - cool )

iBook G3 900MHz - 512 - Combo - 14" - 40GB - Panther 10.3.4

G4 Cube - 450MHz - Airport - 40GB - DVD - External CDRW - 15" TFT

iMac G3 350MHz - 20GB - 256MB - DVD - Airport

ZEN

Hecate

Rob, Dublin - MSc student at the moment but soon to be a productive member of society (*snigger*) come september. Oh yeah I also mod this board occasionaly

Got my first and only mac almost exactly 2 years ago; it was one of the 2nd generation dual usb ibooks, 700mhz G3, 384mb ram, 20gb hd, and the first ibook to be truely usable with os x, as it was at the time. I got it mainly because I liked the size and weight (its the 12" model), handy for lugging in and out of college all day. The operating system appealed to me since it was a proper, integrated gui with a full unix system under the hood. I can hook it up to a 28" television and watch divxes, code some java or c in Xcode, ssh into my shell accounts, write up latex documents, use X windows apps with the native server, hook it up to my stereo and use it as a radio for listening to *decent* alt. rock stations through itunes...the list is endless and it would sound like apple marketing blurb if I went on.... but it really comes down to this - what other operating system comes with graphical traceroute and portscan tools as part of the default install? Crazy stuff

The ibook is still going strong, I take it most places since its extremely portable; its gotten a new lease of life since I put panther onto it - much, much faster - and installed an airport card.

kramxw

Mark, Cork.

Started using a Mac 20 years ago for work, but Windows boxes soon became the norm in the office environment. Two years ago thought about buying a home PC, but did not want to spend all my time fixing "things" plus beige boxes are aesthetically not pleasing on the eye. Made the smart decision following a lot of research to buy an 17" flat panel iMac, and I am still puzzled as to why more people do not make the switch.

NO viruses
no OS crashes
includes all the software to manage your photo's, mp3's, movie's and DVD's.
AppleWorks reads and saves files in MS format
beautifully designed hardware (visitors still don't get the dome, and look under the table for the "box")

Have,
- a G4 800Mhz, 512Mb RAM, 80Gb, SuperDrive 17" iMac with Airport, Bluetooth, and 10.3.4
- a PII 400Mhz, 2 x 4.3Gb SCSI, 384Mb RAM, D-Link PCI Wireless with W2K (freebie, except for wireless card)
- Airport Extreme Base Station w/Modem

Use the PII for two programmes that I cannot find for the iMac, one is for the home alarm system, the other for a Garmin Chartplotter. The PII uses the modem on the Airport station for those rare times I need to surf the web from a W2K machine, and has iTunes installed for sharing music from the iMac.

_sheep

Jason, Waterford

Pc is my main machine, i like games and although macs 'can' play most of the latest games i still use my pc for that because its easier and to be honest better on a pc. I dont think anyone can argue that.

For everything else i use my mac, 12" ibook with 640mb and an airport card. I had a litte samsung laptop before this ibook, 1.4 centrino, tiny thing, mainly bought for its size and weight. I neaver really liked macs because(i thought) it limited what you could do, i.e no gaming (and i assumed youd have trouble with video files, i.e wmp files or the latest codecs etc, how wrong i was). After i had my samsung a few weeks i realised the battery was only lasting about 2hrs while using it and it wasnt all that small, on my second trip back to pc world getting the thing repaired i noticed the 12" ibook. It was the perfect size and weight but i feared i would be limited in what i could do with it, as mentioned above, but i took the pludge and bought it, alot of my friends, fellow nards, thought i was an idiot(above reasons) but once i got using it i found it was the best decision i ever made.

With the default mac its a nice interface, but add desktop manager for multiple desktops, customise exposé so you can use it to suit yourself perfectly(i use the bottom left corner, so i just flick my mouse to the bottom left for a tiled view of everything(i.e f9) add software that allows you to use the sides of your trackpad for scrolling, or whatever you want and of course add VLC for playing videos and you have the best laptop going (nearly forgot the 5hr+ battery life)

Infact now that i think about it, a couple of weeks after i bought my ibook a mate had bought the same laptop as me (thesonofbattles from boards) and two other friends had bought powerbooks(davejam and dogs) Its funny the power macs can have.

PhilipMarlowe

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

We used to have 2 bedrooms in our house set up as offices, with both myself and my wife working late - she was studying too and doing her thesis. So when all that finished we binned the two big pc's and got a 17" powerbook 1GHz with 1Mb ram. It's set up with airport to a cable modem so now it sits on a wee shelf in the kitchen where it's great for checking web/email and when we need to do heavier work on it it's easily moveable to a desk.
I sometimes take it to work or away on a trip... it's too big and heavy to carry around regularly but great for watching a dvd or whatever while away.

I got a dual G4 in work at the same time with a 23" display (nyom nyom) which I use for dreamweaver and photoshop mainly.

I still use windows machines in work too but the mac really suits what I want to use it for. I love Garageband now and it has got me back into playing guitar and home recording.

My brother in the states is in his 50's and he ditched his windows pc at home and got a 17" iMac which he loves. He has his .mac subscription and can take pictures with his digital camera, plug it into his mac and publishing to .mac or emailing the pictures is idiot proof... that's what's so great about the OS and applications - it's so obvious what to do, so simple to use... we also keep in touch with iSight - again, great and simple to use.

The only thing that pisses me off is when I was trying to get my brother to switch (december 2002) we were discussing the company in general and he says to me "So what you are saying is to sell Microsoft and buy Apple"? Of course I hadn't money for shares but this makes me weep ever since

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Licksy
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Inconcievable....:ninja:

Yoda

I think it was in 1985. I bought a Mac SE30, and everyone was sooo jealous because it had a twenty megabyte hard drive! Programs were lightning fast. I suppose few of you remember what it was like switching the low density 3.5" floppies in the two-drive Mac Plus.

I was first in line when the PowerPCs came out. Then I got a Cube. Now it's my trusty PowerBook G4 12.

I typeset.

Nyum Nyum

Hello. I'm in Arklow but originally from Liverpool.

Got 2 macs: a G3 800 iBook (640mb) and a G4 Powermac 1.25Ghz (1Gb)

I'm not a full time Mac user as I like PCs as well.

I find the iBook to be sluggish and the screen quality isn't as sharp as my pc laptop.

The Powermac, however, is far more enjoyable to use (I'm on it now) and I'm using 10.3.4 which is very nice.

It's a bit annoying that I could get a pcmcia card for my pc for £25 yet an Airport card costs £60. Graphics cards are the same. That kind of thing holds me back from being Mac only.

But it's not all negative. Garageband is great fun and the other iApps are good too. Not having to fart around with Anti Virus stuff is good.

One last thing, the worship of Steve Jobs often seen on some Mac boards (mainly American) is extremely annoying.

Hugh_C

chanchan wrote:

I'll go first.
My name is Stephen. have been using Macs now for 3/4 years... I currently own 2 12-inch PBs and a 15-inch Powerbook.

Do you mind me asking why you have 3 laptops? Seems a bit excessive.

I'm Hugh and have been using Macs since about 1986. I know very little about the Windows operating system and don't have any interest in acquiring any. I know Mac pretty much inside out (OS 7.x through 10) and am fairly familiar with Irix too.

I edit film for a living, documentaries, commercials, short movies, whatever.

Currently have PowerBook G4 800MHz and a few legacy machines.

manzana

i work with macs / apple. can't say much about work related issues.
i'm female, between 25-30, have lived and worked in 3 continents, europe and both americas. i speak a bunch of languages, and my bf is a mac user too.