My Macs
I've had many over the years. After the initial SE/30 I got a Mac IIsi, then a Mac IIci. Around 1993 I was using a Quadra 700 (20MB) and also had a Powerbook 140 (6MB). In 1998, I got a PowerMac 7200/266 (128MB) and traded in my Powerbook for a new Powerbook 3400 (48MB). In April 2000, I got a Powerbook G3/500 (256MB). I really enjoyed this laptop until I gave it to Pastor Keith in Jan. 2003.
In August of 2000 I bought a G4 Cube and a Cinema Display. This was the beginning of a new era if for no other reason than I had 640MB of memory and never had any problems having as many applications open as I wanted. This computer served me well until the hard drive crashed in a major way in October of 2002. It was unrecoverable and I lost a lot of stuff.
On May 1, 2002 I made the switch to OSX. Good move. And on the 18th of that month at midnight, I launched the crandalltexas.com website.
I replaced the Cube with a Powermac G4/1.25GB Dual Processor (1024MB). This is what I am using today. I still use the Cinema Display, which is probably the single best piece of hardware I have ever used.
The Macintosh was introduced in January of 1984, and we got our first mac in February, 1989. I basically wasted five years of my life. It was a Macintosh SE/30 with 1MB memory and a 20MB hard drive. It cost $3,250. We had a great big ImageWriter LQ for a printer. The only software I bought was Claris FileMaker II. By March, I was using the software to print invoices and by December, I began keeping trip information in the database. Sometime during 1990, I upgraded the memory to a whopping 2 MB.
By the end of 1990 we had 4 macs networked together using FileMaker. We also had a laser printer.
Over the years we have added macs and replaced them when they began to wear out. As of early 2004 there are over 18,000 different trips our trucks have made, representing over 43 million miles residing in this file! Our archive file contains over 100,000 records. Today we have 12 macs and one server networked.
Macs play a big part in our business. We use them for:
Receiving customer orders thru an FTP process
Viewing Excel files
using Microsoft Word files
Dozens of database uses
My job consists of maintaining the databases, making programming changes as needed, solving server problems, troubleshooting workstations and lots of graphics work. I love doing it.
Macs on a personal level
I enjoy working with Photoshop and using the Apple iApps (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD)
I also take a lot of photos and iPhoto makes managing them so much easier. I put thousands of photos into the iPhoto database each year. From there, I can edit them, put them into web albums, can resize them for use on web pages, email them to friends, print them, or even organize them into a bound book. But more than anything, it serves as a catalog to view my photos. Its fun to put several pictures into an album, and view them with a musical background.
iTunes handles music the same way iPhoto handles pictures. You can convert your CD's to the MP3 format and play music all day long. It also contains internet radio stations that are very interesting, especially if you are fed up with local radio.
PowerMac G4/1.25GB Dual Processor and Apple Cinema Display
