The Cynosural Blog

I spent the weekend pretty much away from my own computer, working with my parents' new Apple iMac, MELA [Italian for apple]. Even though Mela worked fine out of the box, there was quite a bit of set-up to be done, in order for my parents to be able to use it.

The first order of business was to download and set-up Yahoo!Messenger for the Mac. That worked fine.

The next was to get their contacts off of their old Outlook. That didn't work out well, as it wouldn't export. I tried sending the contacts from my palm via bluetooth, as the whole category for family, as that would have most of their contacts. But only the first four would send. I wound up doing sending them one at a time, via bluetooth. It took awhile, but was easier than typing them all in. I did type in the one's that I didn't have. I then exported Mom's new address book as a vcard file, and imported it into Dad's.

Next was importing bookmarks from the last backup, and setting up everything's preferences.

I'm not sure I like the built-in mail client. I can't figure out how to subscribe to IMAP folders on the mail server, for one thing. But it wil work natively with spamAssassin on the server, so that's good.

I also added and configured some widgets, like Sudoku & stock tracking and set-up their dot-Mac accounts.

Then I had to learn how to really use the iMac, so that I can answer their questions. Using control or alt or apple/command, with the mouse or a key. Learning to squeeze the mouse and using the scroll ball thingee - stroke lightly works best. They're now set-up with the basics, but there's much to learn, much to do, and then help them to learn as well.

Nothing like being the home CIO & help desk.