I have moved–or backed-up–most of my files (the bulk of these are video clips, mp3s, photos and the gzipped copies of the Timog Forum database). This wouldn’t have taken too much time but I waited until the last minute to get an external hard disk for the iMac.
These 1- and 2-terabyte hard disks at the computer store were tempting, but one look at their price made me slink back to another corner where the more reasonably-priced megabyte-sized hard disks were located. I chose the cheapest one: a 250MB Buffalo drive for about 12,000 yen.
The drive taken home and files finally moved from the Dimension to the iMac; a mop-up operation over the weekend will clean up the old computer for selling (I already have an enthusiastic buyer actually). Almost 10 years of using a Windows machine at home will come to an end, although I will still use PCs at work (a Japanese Mac Ad, watch out for the sound).
(Rough translation of the Japanese Mac Ad:
PC: Hello, I’m a PC.
Mac: Hello, I’m a Mac.
PC: Hey, aren’t you a PC, too?
Mac: Yeah, but people usually call me “Mac”.
PC: So, you’re kinda special right? Like a friend.
Mac: People usually use me in the privacy of their homes, so maybe I’m easy to get along with.
PC: Right. Well, people usually use me at work… I want a special name, too, like you.
Mac: Well… If you’re mainly used on the job… How about “Waaku” (The Japanese word for “Work”.)
PC: (Pointing to Mac) “Makku” and (pointing to himself) “Waaku”! Cool!
I know this doesn’t sound funny (translations rarely are) but the whole thing is a play on the words “Makku” (meaning “Mac”) and “Waaku” (meaning “work”) and how the PC guy thinks it’s a cool name.
At the risk of getting too far off-topic, I like the PC guy better (like I like the PC guy in the English ads better than the Mac guy) and these two comedians (their younger versions) were also in another subtly funny video clip — this one about eating sushi.)
Power Macintosh 6100/AV from Wikipedia
If I sound like it’s my first time using a Mac, well, the fact is my first 4 computers were Macs. I have had in succession the Color Classic II, the Performa 630, the LC 588, and the Power Macintosh 6100 Dos Compatible (similar to the one above).
This Power Mac was a dual-personality PC, powered by 66MHz PowerPC and 486DX2 chips through which I ran both Kanji Talk 7.5 (the Japanese MacOS 7.5) and Windows 95 in a dual-booting system. It was the only computer I know at that time (or any time since except the current Intel Macs) that could run both MacOS and Windows.
After I sold the Power Mac 6100 in the late nineties and while lusting after the PowerWave 150 (a Mac clone), a friend of mine gave me a Pentium 133 chip, so I decided to assemble a PC around it and got stuck with Windows for almost 10 years. So in a way, this iMac is a way back to my old computing roots. I hope it will be a good trip.