Wednesday
Vlad has handed me a MacBook he had bought for 'test-driving'.
When I first saw it, I thought it looked like a giant Nintendo DS - the curved corners, the slim case with its clean lines reminiscent of Nintendo's small, but perfectly-formed handheld console. But no stylus and no touch-screen.
Immediately, there are things which just strike you about the MacBook - the outside is less fussy: all the ports are arranged down one side (not dotted randomly around the edges of the case), just one cover underneath, magnetic power cord, low profile rubber feet (less prone to being knocked off than the awkwardly-shaped and ungainly rubber feet on my Dell - of which I have lost one or more).
My second thought was where does the extra memory go? My Dell has hatches and removable covers galore, so I can replace all the things that I need to replace on my Windows laptop. Never mind, maybe I'll find a secret hatch later.
Low-profile and integral CD/DVD slot. Nice.
Inside: magnetic closure on the lid (no catches to break), integral webcam, 'closed' keyboard to keep out dirt and food, expansive mousepad and one-piece mouse button.
Unfortunately, the battery was dead and thus I had to wait till I got home to power it up.
On doing so, I found myself looking at the Russian comedy video site, I think Vlad had been talking about in the car on the way back from our meeting. So I clicked on a link...network not connected, of course.
So I tried to connect to my home network. I looked up the 26-character key required to connect. Error. Made sure the router is in pairing mode (thanks, Inventel). Re-typed the 26-character key from memory - another 7 times. Error each time.
This was my first stumbling block - Apple's fault or the fault of my network? My router is not the easiest to interrogate. For some reason, the router is slow to serve up its webpages. I should probably do a factory reset or install the spare I have, but then I'll have to re-configure the nine or so devices I have connected to it, which is a major faff.
I continued to interrogate the crappy router.
[2 hours later...]
Finally, I managed to get connected to my network and online! (I had to change the security settings back to WEP...). And then I got a series of green lights for the AirPort connection and I was connected to the Internet.
My next thought was to log off Vlad and somehow set up a profile for myself. So logged off Vlad...and got stuck... :(
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