The first crisis.... *gasp*
The first crisis we encountered with the iMac was installing the kids software. Yes, the software was compatible BUT with OS 9 or below. We had OS 10 installed - but we had only been given the disks for OS 8!!! Uh-oh!!! Uh-oh!!!
At first take, this seemed like a huge crisis. Should we blow away the latest version of the operating system so that the kids could use their programs? We would also loose the other preinstalled software. OS 8 seemed like kinda a loooooooong way to regress? But as ex-windows users we were about to lear a new trick! You can in fact have BOTH OS 10, alright I mean OS X, AND OS 9 and below installed at the same time!!! How weird is that? It's like being able to launch Windows '95 from within Windows XP.
The way it works best is to get hold of the last release of OS 9 - (we got 9.2.2 off eBay very cheaply, bundled with 10.1). OS 9 is then installed on the Mac - the Mac then refers to this OS as "Classic". So then when the kids go to play their CD's, if the Mac has been operating using OS X, it simply launches OS 9 and voila! You CAN have your cake and eat it too!!!! And being so user friendly, here's a tip how you can tell which OS the Mac is using - if the little apple symbol in the top left corner is rainbow coloured - it's running in classic mode. If the little apple symbol is blue - it's running OS X. Nifty ;)
Well, the important lesson I learned from all that is that you do have to check Mac software carefully to see which version of the OS it runs under. There is a big difference!!!
The second crisis on the Mac was setting up user profiles. Actually, this wasn't much of a crisis. It was very straight forward. We left the original profile intact as the administration profile. Then we simply added a new user for our son. This meant that we still have control over the machine (in theory anyway). The trick was changing the settings for my son's profile using the administration account, to give my son enough permission to install programs. It took a bit of going backwards and forwards between the two profiles to get the balance right. Luckily there's a shortcut for changing user profiles very quickly - phew!!!!
By the time we had all this solved, I had started to get a good feel for the way the Mac was set up. However, my next challenge was... actually installing a program!!!
Posted by fliztea at 10:47 PM
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