I know it's not May as of yet, so I have a bit still yet to financially
save, but I do want to be at least going ahead and doing my homework on
things.
I myself am a huge Apple fanatic. By now, you all should know that. I have
IPhones here, IPads, a mac mini, a Mac book, a few apple TV's, etc.
Needless to say, I love! Apple! With this said, here is the situation.
My mother currently has an old Dell Demention desktop Windows tower machine.
Hold on, before you,Gordon or Lynn chew me out saying this list isn't
Windows related, let me finish my comment, then you'll know why I'm
mentioning the Windows side of this, as believe me, this post has hardly
anything! to do with Windows. I say this though so you all know what she's
got currently. So, it's running Windows XP SP3, I'm not sure the ram nor
hard disk size. I know she bought the thing back in 2004. I want to say a
50 or 80 gig drive, roughly, I'd say around 512MB ram. This thing's got
spyware galore on it, probably viruses left and right, and honestly has not
been scanned nor updated in probably over 2 years. I keep telling her to do
it, but that leads me to why I'm writing this e-mail...
She is extremely! basic when it comes to computers. When her company made
her stop using a Blackberry (or as I'd call it, a Crap berry,) she went into
using her work IPhone 4S kicking and screaming. Between myself and one of
my mom and I's best friends who's like a brother to me, and like a 2nd son
to her, we both worked with her, and got her to where now, she doesn't do a
huge amount with her phone aside texting and e-mail, and maybe using her
camera a fair amount etc. I think she's used Pandora maybe once or twice,
and she uses Downcast almost constantly. Point is, she's not a huge techy
like I am, or a lot of us are on list.
She has seen my Mac computers and said they actually looked really easy to
use from what little she saw. I told her compared to windows, I personally
had to whole heartedly agree. To me, the mac makes way more sense. It just
seems to be way better laid out, and for beginners, seems to be extremely
intuitive. With this said, her birthday is May the 6th. I'm going to be
getting her a Mac Mini with Mountain Lion, as frankly, she really! does need
a new computer. And, she's really starting to get more into the Apple line
of things. She's got an Apple TV 2nd generation, and watches Hulu Plus all
the time! on the thing, plus her Netflix. She's in heaven with the thing!
That was her BD gift last year. Also, her sister gave her an IPad 1st
generation which she swears by. So, I come to you all, for advice. She
probably wont' do much more than browsing the web in Safari, or maybe in
Chrome/Firefox, she may do some basic and I do, mean, very! very! basic
photo viewing/editing, like cropping or resizing in Preview/IPhoto. (She's
sighted.) She'll probably check E-mail a fair amount with the Mail
application, and probably would want to do some stuff with Itunes, and
she'll probably wind up using IWorks. Also she may use the native DVD
player app a bit to watch movies. She's not going to be doing a lot of
heavy duty stuff. No audio editing, no video editing, no hard powered core
photo editing, just more the very basic stuff.
She currently has a monitor with her Dell system, but it's V G A only. The
minis require HDMI. Yes, I know about the adapter that comes in the mac
mini box to convert that HDMI, but she doesn't have a port that even would
fit the adapter, and her monitor doesn't have HDMI either. I thought about
getting her maybe a Dynex, or Samsung, or Acer or some really inexpensive
flatscreen HDMI ready television that she could hook to the mini, but I
wonder if you all know of any good make/model with built in stereo
speakrers. This way, she also wouldn't have to be concerned with getting a
set of pc speakers. Actually, she's already got a pair, so if worst came to
worst, we could use the ones she already has. Also, do you all think the I5
4GB ram model with the 500GB internal drive would suit her fine based on her
needs listed above? I'm thinking by far and away! it would, plus! probably
would give her plenty! of wiggle room to learn and explore. I bought the
$70 CD/DVD USB superdrive with my mini, and I absolutely swear by it, so I
may eventually down the road get her one a those as well, although it's not
something right now she really desperetly needs.
Also, what type keyboard do you all suggest I get her if I wanna get her a
native Apple keyboard? I don't want her having to use a Windows PC keyboard
on a Mac system. Yes, I do realize it would work just fine, but I'd rather
get her something a little nicer. I personally have the white flat metel
aluminum wired USB Apple keyboard with the num pad included, but I'm not
sure if Apple is still making it. I think I paid in the neighborhood of
about $49.99 for the thing. It was, so! worth it though! I'm just
wonderring between the TV, and the keyboard, plus the mac itself, do you all
think I'm looking at the right avenew? I really do think that the I7 may be
a bit over-kill for her need.
Chris.
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