Yesterday I got in a shiny, brand new 17″ Apple eMac 1.25GHz with 256mB RAM, 40GB Hard drive, and a combo CD/RW/DVD drive.Everything about the Mac is pretty. The four colour box was gorgeous, the actual unit itself is white with a clear keyboard and a pretty sweet (although strangely single buttoned) clear mouse.

I unboxed it, found a good place for it, hooked it up, then turned it on. From the time I opened the package, until I first logged in, it took about 15 minutes. The eMac (or Mackie as I like to call him), then went online and got a bunch of updates, which took another ten minutes. I then proceeded to download IE 5.2, Firefox, Camino, and Mozilla.

I then started scratching my head as how to install a program. After downloading everything, I double clicked on it and a pretty hard drive icon came up. It wasn’t until I installed Camino and it told me to drag an icon to the “applications” folder to complete the installation, that I figured out how to install stuff.

Next I spent about an hour trying out a bunch of different programs. Safari (the web browser) is pretty cool. I played with iDVD, and Garage Band, touched on iPhoto adn iTunes…then I proceeded to crash the thing about six times in a row by using FireFox, Mozilla, Camino, and IE. Loads of fun. It also stopped responding for about five minutes during a Garage Band test.

So far the whole experience has been very Mac-lightening, although I have not yet been assimilated into the Mac-sphere.

Pictures to follow!